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huynhsontung
Seekbar Preview - Feature Request
Seekbar Preview is the most important feature that VLC lacks. Having this inside Screenbox would be a great user experience. Other video players like PotPlayer, MPC-HC and MPV (via script) have this option.
This is a very cool feature but also is very tricky to get it to work since VLC does not support it directly. VLC does have the API to export frames from a video. There are two approaches that I can see for this feature.
- Generate these previews in the background for every video file in the library then query them on playback. This approach helps previews load quickly during playback but falls apart when playing something out of the library. It would not make sense for big video libraries either, due to storage and processing constraints.
- Generate previews live during playback. Preview may take a while to populate and the playback experience may be affected since we are effectively playing the same video twice. We don't need to worry about storage in this case.
Either way, this feature is quite a low priority right now and will have to wait until after other essential features are in place. I agree that it would provide a great user experience.
Generate previews live during playback. Preview may take a while to populate and the playback experience may be affected since we are effectively playing the same video twice. We don't need to worry about storage in this case.
I think this is the best option for sure, the thumbnail can just be displayed with a little loading icon until the previews are generated. Also, there doesn't necessarily need to be a preview for every frame, so the preview could be generated by playing the video back at a very high speed. If the system's resources don't allow for enough RAM to save the previews or enough spare CPU to both play the video and generate previews, then it could just throw an error saying previews couldn't be generated for this video file, and move on.
Generate previews live during playback. Preview may take a while to populate and the playback experience may be affected since we are effectively playing the same video twice. We don't need to worry about storage in this case.
I think this is the best option for sure, the thumbnail can just be displayed with a little loading icon until the previews are generated. Also, there doesn't necessarily need to be a preview for every frame, so the preview could be generated by playing the video back at a very high speed. If the system's resources don't allow for enough RAM to save the previews or enough spare CPU to both play the video and generate previews, then it could just throw an error saying previews couldn't be generated for this video file, and move on.
That's a good idea. Only every 2nd or 5th second's frame could be shown.
Also video could be played at a very low resolution to save the resources.