Suggestions from our Environmental Users

[fhandke-fugro]

Hello,

More and more of our environmental scientists are using Biigle. It is a great project!

We have collected some feedback/feature requests from them. I would be interested if you think those things could potentially find their way into Biigle?

1. Detach video timeline: Make it possible to detach the video timeline and view video full screen: The users find themselves scrolling around in the timeline a lot to find the names of species that they already labelled. Also sometimes the size of the video makes it hard to see details. This feature would help with both. I found a issue on that already on the Biigle roadmap: Detach the video timeline to a separate window #674. I would be interested if there is a concrete plan to push that forward?
2. Overwrite labels: If a user has added the label in a video and a second user tries to change it (via Shift + L) then the label gets added. But the old label is still there (duplicate). This is inconvenient because people have to separately delete those. If the same user that created the label does it it behaves as expected and there is no duplicate label. If the concern of that is that users overwrite other peoples annotations, then maybe you could allow it for "admin" users in the project? I know that it is possible via Largo ("Force"), but would be good to have that possibility also in the timeline view.
3. In the settings of videos there is a button "Capture screenshot" that seems to be deactivated for all videos (for the images it works and captures a screenshot). It would also be helpful for our users to have this functionality (capture full size video frame for certain timestamp) for videos. They would want to use it to create a reference collection (full screen video snapshot necessary).

Thanks for your response! :)

Felix

[mzur]

Hi Felix, thanks for your feedback!

1. Since this is a feature now requested two times by users, we recognize its significance. However, it won't be easily implemented and our development resources are stretched quite thin, so I can't say anything about if/when it will be implemented. Since we offer and develop BIIGLE free of charge, we encourage all organizations/institutes/businesses using it to contribute. We'd gladly accept code contributions for features on our roadmap that were funded by a third party. There may also be other ways to support BIIGLE development and/or speed up the development of certain features. Please reach out to info@biigle.de if you like to talk about this.

2. Indeed, regular "editors" in a project are not allowed to delete the labels of other users. This can only be done by "experts" and "admins". I have described the feature for "force swap" here, please check if the description aligns with what you had in mind.

3. There was a bug with the video screenshot button that was fixed in v3.96.0. Please check if you use this version and if not, consider an upgrade. Also note that the screenshot will not be done in the original resolution of the video but in the resolution of the video as it is currently displayed in the annotation tool. This may be larger or smaller, depending on the screen and zoom factor.

[fhandke-fugro]

Hi, thanks for the detailed update!

We haven't updated to v3.96.0 yet, so we'll look into that.

The description of the "Force swap label tool" fits well with what we had in mind.

We'll discuss the potential for contracting work or contributions internally and get back to you.

Thanks again!