Google Summer of Code with Pitivi

12 Jul 2019

This summer I am working under the mentorship of Alexandru Băluț to improve the user experience of the Effects feature in Pitivi.

In the first phase of my project, I worked on redesigning Pitivi’s “Effect Library” to allow users to easily find, organise and utilize their desired effects.

Current Effect Library UI

My first assignment was to remove the ComboBox at the top and replace it with seperate Expanders for the various categories. In the process, we also decided to move away from showing Audio and Video effects separately, instead choosing to integrate “Audio” just as another category. This enabled us to present a hierarchical yet simple interface which also allowed the user to have multiple categories open at once.

The next order of business was to replace the tiny 4:3 thumbnails we have for the effects with larger and more expressive 16:9 ones (Thanks to Valentin Orient for contributing these beautiful new thumbnails!).

My final task for this phase was to add a “Favourites” feature which would allow the user to gather all the effects of their choice in a separate view for quick and easy access. For this, I added a ☆ button to the effects which enables the user to effortlessly check or change its “favorited” state.

New Effect Library UI

Concluding my work on the “Effect Library” and I will now be moving onwards to renovating the “Clip Tab” for the next phase.

If you wish to reach me, you can find me in #pitivi and #newcommers on GIMPNet as yat_irc.