[Bf-funboard] Modernizing the Video Sequencer Editor UI

[Paulo José Amaro]

Hi,

I'm Paulo Jose, from Brazil, and I want to share some ideas and suggestions
about the Video Sequencer Editor's user interface.

I sent my first message to bf-commiters mails list and had very good
suggestions there. Then someone told me that here could be a better place
to discuss this. So I'm copying my message here.

I'm being a Blender user for many years and the main functionality I use is
the VSE. Along the years, I used many tools, from VirtualDub to Adobe
Premiere. Blender is by far the most complete and powerful open source
software to work with, its flexibility is the keyword here. But there are
some areas of VSE that still can be improved.

Taking advantage of the new Tabs feature which is being implemented in
Blender UI and the current moving to reorganizing things in a better way, I
put my efforts to study how to improve Blender's VSE UI.

In the past days I prepared a little Demo of a modernized UI for VSE, made
with HTML+CSS+JS to simulate the Blender UI and some of its behavior. It's
not a "lets throw everything away", but most like "lets move these options
to here, those to there". The Demo includes a step by step guide to every
change, explaining my motivation about them, so I don't get longer in this
mail.

You can access it here: Blender Sequencer Video Editor -
Demo<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5107072/blender-vse-2014/sequencer.html>

The changes are restrict to Properties Panel. You can compare it with the
current UI by clicking on "How was this screen" button. There are some few
new features, but most of them are already in another parts of Blender and
they are not out of scope.

I would like very much to know your opinion. And I'll keep to work on this
based on your feedback. My intent is to try to modernize VSE, starting by
the Properties Panel, then going to menus and so on.

I'm not a developer, but I put myself available to help with design tasks
and maybe coding too if needed. I'm experienced with using Inkscape, coding
with Python and a little of C. I just need some guidance.

I'm sorry for any misspelling, English is not my main language, but I love
to learn! I hope to get familiar with this mail listing and actively
participate of it. :-)

Someone said that some development may be happening already to VSE. I did
know nothing about it, and I would like to know more and to get involved,
if it's possible. I'm open to adapt my proposal to the current development,
or help some another way you may think I should.

Thank you for your time and I hope my efforts may be useful somehow.

Cheers,
~Paulo