How long are we waiting for an animated thumbnail, really?

Help & Support
1

I hate watching thumbnails everywhere go animated before DO does. I still hope that one day, little by little, I could start enjoying more of a visual+functional presentation to file browsing. I know we can't easily have all our video thumbnails be animated unless they can be suspended when not visible on screen, but I wanna believe we could have the thumbs start playing on hover-over from the frame the thumb was still on. Just imagine the magic.

It would be the perfect time to take it on by storm, when others are struggling. On Linux the thumbs play for a few seconds before getting unbearable color distortions, Valve only uses it on it's popups in Steam (apart from the ads, obviously), and hell, even Microsoft is struggling with going past 256x256 resolution (ironically reminiscent of times when they were actual thumb's nail sized :laughing: Somehow, most thumb animation is seen on mobile and websites. I tend to think a home rig has more power to pull it off, nevermind the vast quantities. Wouldn't you want to be a part of the evolution rather than the devolution? Cheer up, we're still ahead of the groove enough to show them how it's done. We're paying customers, how much could it be?

But really can we at least get one alternate frame, changing every X seconds, or at least one for GIFs? Maybe not hover-over but on click? Even in the popup? Gotta start somewhere! It's literally all I need my hardware for, and I don't get to apply it. Why not give us the chance to try? And honestly, the more megalomaniac the high-end settings available the better, at least we'll have things to thrive for!

Right now I have to run 11+1 separate random playlists in 13 players just so find something interesting to watch. One quarter screen sized MPC-HC boarderless in the middle, 11 1/16th sized in the sides, in custom FancyZones via PowerTools (all free), then just keep bringing the most interesting one in the middle and put the volume on that (the empty spot if for trading places). Never a dull ■■■■ing minute after that, but it's not browsing. Browsing needs to catch up. Random will never replace browsing but they'd rather not go to war in our heads.

I really should post some screenshots shouldn't I? Too lazy to.

2

Talking of thumbnail animations, when in thumbnail mode and resizing a lister can the thumbnails flow into their new positions instead of instantly jumping ?

3

We once had animated thumbnails for mouse cursor files.

Even discounting resource usage and video codec issues, animated thumbnails were very distracting if you were in a folder with anything that triggered them. IMO the viewer pane works better for this.

4

Distracting? Isn't the whole purpose of a thumbnail to find the wanted content? This is distracting to you? If more information is given via slideshow or clip? Perhaps not so distracting if all of them were animated. I just find still thumbnails a tremendous waste of precious time that nobody can afford. Functionality above all.

Imagine having to upload your gifs to a website just to be able to view them animated in a single page without individually opening the thousands of them. I don't even want to mention the modern formats with proper colors like animated png, webp. Our collections are being replaced almost entirely of webp and even that is completely refused.