Video 5/6 wishlist from CCTV

Hi Fabio,

I'm taking this opportunity to write up a wishlist from our organization for your next Video module version. In addition to the wishlist there are also some suggestions from other issues I have seen recently. These are some features that would take both your module and our community television work to the very next level. You've got a great module that we have been depending on heavily for two years now, even through the buggy times, and we're excited that you are still on the project.

Granted, all this comes from a guy with no coding experience, so take it all with a grain of salt:

1. First, a couple of bugs haunt the current video module: http://drupal.org/node/109626, http://drupal.org/node/137560. I know that you are already concerned about these.

2. Better handling of play-in-node. I think the default playback should be configured to present the media player in the full node with full node text and such, so users waiting for video to load will have something to look at while they wait (instead of leave in frustration). Of course leave the option to change this, but this new default could make the module more accessible to admins and users.

3. Provide a system of scaling video playback dimensions for length and width. Let users upload any dimension of video files (320x240, etc), but allow admins to determine the playback dimensions (180x150, 640x480, etc). Then themers can force video players into elements in their themes. I don't know the details about managing the multiple media players or if this is possible.

4. In addition to part 2, also consider a flexible thumbnail display size, available to Views. Let admins set thumbnail display sizes when building a new view. Very attractive for admins, would prevent some admins from writing custom tpl.php files for each new view they need.

5. Allow admins to enable or disable video formats with simple checkboxes instead of hacking the module. Also allow admins to enable their own custom video file types and handlers without hacking the module file.

6. Reconsider the approach to uploading videos and thumbnails. Would making use of other parallel modules that are maintained by other developers then reduce maintanence on the Video module? If your video_upload and video_thumbnails take a lot of work to maintain and troubleshoot, why not make better use of image_attach and various file attachment modules to reduce your workload? I imagine a reduction in workload would mean the Video module can stay more up to date and be more responsive to needs from the admin and user community.

7. Playlists! This is really science fiction. Give users the ability to play sequences of video files on one screen, letting admins make playlists with taxonomy. Imagine that I can navigate to view of taxonomy tagged nodes for "fish" and from there I get to watch all of the videos that have been tagged with "fish" back to back, without clicking anything else. In DVD authoring there is a principle called "end jump" which tells the DVD player to jump to a specified target at the end of a video or track. Maybe something like this could be implemented for Views. Then admins can effectively build "channels" that can be viewed much like traditional television, using all the powerful logic and sorting of Views to build them.

Thanks, Fabio, for the chance to post all these items and thanks very much for considering them. See how we have implemented your work at:

http://www.cctvcambridge.org
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/webchannel
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/youthchannel
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/mediamap

Sean