[David Byers]

I would like to suggest what I think would be an improvement to timecode search in videos (where you enter a time, and xbmc seeks to that position in the video). I have almost all of this working in 9.11, so if this suggestion is met with approval, I'll port it to current SVN and submit a ticket and patch in trac.

• It should be possible to enter seconds as well as hours and minutes. Users who only want hours and minutes should be able to turn seconds off through advancedsettings.xml.
  
  
• When a time is displayed, the skip commands (skip forward/back by a fixed amount) should skip by the amount entered instead of the fixed amounts. So to skip forward by 43 seconds, enter 00:00:43, then use any skip-forward command. Let's call this feature 'variable-length skipping'. There is a ticket and patch in trac for this already, but I think my implementation is better.
  

I propose the following UI changes to support the above features:

• When entering the time, numbers should shift in from right to left. This reduces the number of keystrokes/button presses required in many cases, and with the current behavior is necessary to support variable-length skipping of small amounts (xbmc would seek to the time entered as soon as you entered the seconds value -- see next bullet).
  
  
• Seeking to a specific time is triggered when the user has entered a complete time (currently four digits). I propose to keep this as default but allow the user to disable it through advancedsettings.xml.
  
  
• There should be a key/button to immediately seek to the time entered so far. That way, if you want to seek to e.g. 1:30, you enter '130', then one more key, not '000130'.
  
  
• While entering the time, the template displayed should be '--:--:--' instead of 'hh:mms' (currently it is 'hh:mm'). I have found that the current template works well when the numbers are typed left-to-right, but when shifting from the right, it's less successful (probably because in that case, the time is always a valid time, but with the letters in there, it looks like it isn't).
  

I think these changes improve usability as well as add useful features, while having no negative effects on existing behavior or functionality. Plus you can almost revert to current behavior by disabling the seconds feature.

What do you think?

[jmarshall]

I support all of this with the exception of too many advanced settings. Let's choose a sane default and go with it.

IMO we default to having seconds up - it's easy enough for those that want minutes to just hit 0 twice at the end.

Using Select, play/pause or seek to confirm seems sane as well.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[David Byers]

See ticket 9680 for a patch. It differs from the original description as follows, based on comments and my experience with using the feature for about a week:

- Display and entry of seconds cannot be turned off.

- The initial display is 00:00:00, not --:--:--. Otherwise the width of the display changes as you enter digits ('-' is narrower than a digit), which is really annoying.

- Automatic skipping to the entered time is disabled by default. If more than six digits are entered, they are rotated. The old behavior can be enabled using advancedsettings.xml (because I don't know if there are users with input devices that have digits but no free buttons to confirm entry of the time).

- The total and current time are displayed with seconds. With only hours and minutes displayed, it was confusing.

I've been using a version of this patch backported to 9.11 for a while, and like it a lot. I've tested the patch in current SVN (rev 32004) as well.

[jmarshall]

Thanks - I'll review the patch and make any further comments there

Cheers,
Jonathan