Two steps forward, one step back. That’s how I feel about the crappy media scrubbing interface built into the iPhone, iPod touch, and I guess pretty much all touch screen-based media devices. Ever since I “upgraded,” I’ve missed my scroll-wheel.
The playhead/timeline widget is frustrating to use and doesn’t facilitate navigation of media with any real precision.
What’s worse, the level of navigational precision decreases in proportion to the length of the audio or video file. That’s because more time gets mashed into the same 1.8” of scrubbable timeline space. This is really apparent for things like podcasts, audiobooks, movies, etc.
There are 2 problems here:
# the UI requires me to use a course-grain input method (my finger on a small display) to control a fine-grain input mechanism (timeline/playhead).
# There’s a fixed, linear mapping between input and output. In fact, they’re one and the same: input = output.
The scrollwheel doesn’t have these problems because a) the input method and interface mechanism are both course-grain, and b) input and output are only loosely coupled.
Let me explain b) a little better. The scroll-wheel is an example of an indirect, or mediated interface. I manipulate the wheel, which in turn affects the playhead’s position along the timeline. At the end of the day, this means that revolutions on the scrollwheel can translate into an increment of time that’s absolute vs. proportional to the duration of the media file.
Apple designers even inserted some really smart code into this mediation layer that let me use other cues on the scrollwheel—like velocity and acceleration—to control how fast or slow playhead moved along (like shifting gears). It works really well, and in my opinion was key to the success of the iPod early on. (Do you remember the first time you used the scollwheel on an iPod? I do.)
It’s worth pointing out that Apple could essentially make a touch-screen version of the scroll-wheel interface for iPod Touch and iPhone.
I’m not holding my breath…
written by David Gillis
you can control the speed of the scrubbing by moving your finger up/down the screen. so let’s say you have an hour long podcast, and you know that there’s an interesting bit at the 27 min mark. when you first start scrubbingit’ll be in “Hi-speed Scrubbing” mode, as you get close to the mark move your finger down without taking it of off the surface and it’ll switch to “Quarter speed Scrubbing”, move it down a little more and you’ll get “Half speed Scrubbing” and if you go down a bit more you’ll get “Fine Scrubbing”.
Oh, nice. You just negated my whole post—Kudos :P
Seriously though, I guess the only point I’d make is that while this augmentation to the interface solves the issue of precise navigation, it entails a learning curve whereas my beloved scrollwheel is/was pretty much intuitive.
At any rate, thanks for the tip. I’m totally going to use this!
DaveG
Dan beat me to the punch :)
The scrubbing speed control in 3.0 isn’t the most intuitive interaction, but then again what gesture is? Another example where gestural multi-touch devices make users learn a vocabulary of very fine motor control skills, adapting to an ever-changing set of interfaces.
Wow, thanks for the tip too. That is a well hidden feature for sure. I will add though that it is still kind of fiddly. Still needs some work for sure.
I too wish to see the scroll wheel work as zoom in and out in Streetview mode. I noticed that when I tried to roll the mouse wheel to scroll up/down a mouse page, it wouldn’t work! Now, the majority of us here at CDFreaks have a mouse with a scroll wheel.Here in this post very good tips are given to follow.