[Feature Request]: Single Control Set for Audio/Video Files

[csponge]

Checklist

• I am using an up-to-date version.
• I have read the documentation.
• I have searched existing issues.

Description

Some work has been done for playing audio and video files. In the current source, the audio player is using different controls than the video player. It would be nice if they could share the same control set.

Solution

I think one possible solution is to create a separate "media controls" widget that can overlay the video/thumbnail. I've been playing around with it, and I think it could look something like this:

FLAC file:

It would look similar for a video:

MP4 file:

Alternatives

Another alternative I had considered is to make an all encompassing widget which would contain all the preview widgets and the overlay. I originally wasn't a fan of this approach because it seemed like a large refactor.

I'd be interested in hearing other alternatives.

[Qronikarz]

Don't know how that is exactly handled in TagStudio (so Python and it's libraries), but for example in HTML the <audio> and <video> tags are nearly the same. Only difference is not having the poster width and height. But if I remember correctly you can even play audio in video tag (and vice versa?).

So this idea definitely has value on paper.

[CyanVoxel]

I would also love to have a unified widget + controls for video and audio files! This was something mentioned during #576, but fell out of the scope of refactoring the video player in the same PR.

I'm also currently working on a preview panel refactor as a part of #655, which while it doesn't include unified controls, will significantly change the codebase in this area and prepare it for a future unified media widget. Because of this I'll be adding the "Status: Blocked" label to this issue until #655 is merged so that nobody gets caught up in merge conflicts, but otherwise this would be great!

[csponge]

Just saw this was unblocked. Is anyone already working on this? If not, I'd be happy to help out.

Thanks!