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By now, _everybody_ heard about our enterprise Multimedia applications Amarok(Music) and Digikam(Images). But as this:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=77036
forum thread and the comments on this blog-post:
http://andreasdevblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/kmix-without-alsa-no-way/ suggest, we still lack a good home movie database management software.
In both cases 2 options were suggested.

1. beef up Dragonplayer
Dragonplayer calls itself a sister project of Amarok but is by now more like a fast and simple movie watching tool. Nothing interesting for somebody with a database of say 100-200 movies, right? Still easy and handy to use.
So, It would be possible to pickup what Dragonplayer already has and enhance it with some of the goodnes we also applied to Amarok.

2. Use Kaffeine
Allright, kaffeine has some nice features, allright. It can view DHB-T-TV(?) play discs by chapter and a playlist. Oh yeah a playlist feature sure thats easy and perfectly allright when you want to watch several videos after each other as a background entertainment during work hours. But it still doesn't have the rating, the web-db connection , the management and all that goodnes you have when using amarok.

So now maybe trying match it to something like amarok and digikam really doesn't work so well. But it is a first trial and we can only get better from here .
Another proposal would be to drop one of the aforementioned Movieplayers and keep one for the singletime watching crowd and one for the experts/fans of moving pictures.

Gosh, just add a "Video" tab to Amarok and be done with it instead of adding management features to other apps.
With the exception of MP3, all current audio formats reside in containers that also hold videos: MP4, Ogg, Matroska.
So Amarok wouldn't even need to add support for new file types.

Maybe you are right about the format question. But there is a huge diffrence between the management capabilities of a Video database and a Music database please dont forget that.

good idea

That's why I wrote that a video tab should be introduced. It could load another context view ect.
At least to me this seems to be less work to tweak Amarok for video than adding management capabilities to other apps.

I'm pretty sure the Amarok developers have stated that they won't add full video support to Amarok.

Well, they won't also transform Kaffeine (or VLC). That doesn't mean that they won't accept patches, right?
Basic video functionality of Amarok is already there.

Another option would be to enhance digiKam, even though I wouldn't prefer it. "My" video management app should also handle video podcasts. Podcasts in general are best handled by apps that run in the background all the time anyway. Music players usually do that and Amarok also already hast podcast support.

PS: Because of all that overhead for a dedicated vodcast app, I don't even use Miro. Currently I have vodcasts subscribed in Akregator.

Another problem imo is the lack of metadata tags for common video formats (avi doesn't seem to have anything, ogg has a few different things floating about, like vorbiscomments, but I can't find anything to read them). Does anyone know anything more about this?

Also keep in mind the old Unix philosophy: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well, programs that work well together."
In that case amarok for music collections and the movieplayer, yet not decided which, which do the same for movies.
Btw : I maybe found a base for it called QMediaBibliothek grab it at kde-apps.org. Its prety good except for some quirks.

gillespie wrote:Another problem imo is the lack of metadata tags for common video formats (avi doesn't seem to have anything, ogg has a few different things floating about, like vorbiscomments, but I can't find anything to read them). Does anyone know anything more about this?

The application would reside close to KDE so tagging is done with nepomuk.
Tagging in files is a good question I will see if I can find soemthing.

KAMiKAZOW wrote:Well, they won't also transform Kaffeine (or VLC). That doesn't mean that they won't accept patches, right?
Basic video functionality of Amarok is already there.

They ,probably, won't want them and won't apply them.

KAMiKAZOW wrote:
Another option would be to enhance digiKam, even though I wouldn't prefer it. "My" video management app should also handle video podcasts. Podcasts in general are best handled by apps that run in the background all the time anyway. Music players usually do that and Amarok also already hast podcast support.

The firs t thing to do will be to get a working database-using application that is easy to use this will be added later on I think.

KAMiKAZOW wrote:
PS: Because of all that overhead for a dedicated vodcast app, I don't even use Miro. Currently I have vodcasts subscribed in Akregator.

Sure you can its up to you.

I, personally, would like to keep Dragon player simple: it starts quickly and plays the video file, which, in the end, is all a lot of people want.

On the other hand, an application for a video library would be nice. I disagree with using Amarok - it would make it take *even longer* to load then it currently does. We don't NEED to load the ability to read/play/display your music library if you're watching a video or managing a video library, and vice versa.

If this is to be done I would suggest an application partnered to dragonplayer (like DigiKam and ShowFoto), so that dragonplayer stays simple but shares code and aspects of interface design with the more powerful dragonlibrary or whatever.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say I think the design of dragonplayer is fantastic. Keeping things simple really does make it easier to use. The way "Toggle menu" works in DVDs is great and you can always find the controls you need quickly. In contrast VLC is great but navigating those huge context menus makes the experience of using it feel just that bit more frustrating.

thanks I will keep that in mind.

I believe we should start developing from Kaffeine a such application. Almost all what it needs is great database + IMDB support.

Elisa and other home theater software tries to complete this but I do not want fullscreen application, but more like digiKam and Amarok2. Simple and powerfull to rate, organize, comment, query information and so on.

It just would be perfect.

I would not count Dragonplayer for such application anyway, because it just does not have enough features for basic use either. It just allows user to view it on window (ugly mode) or fullscreen. All the common features like menu and syspanel hiding are missing, playlist and searching are limited for history use.