Media pool filtering suggestion.

I’ve seen a lot of new users think that their timelines or media have disappeared because they have entered a search term in the media pool search dialogue, or have otherwise filtered the media pool i.e., with smart bins.

I’d recommend that the media pool should always show all available media, and merely dim, disable, and sort-to-bottom all items which don’t meet the search/filter criteria.

Can anyone think of reasonable objections to always showing all available media?


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I don’t think this the best solution to the (alleged) problem. As someone who uses Smart Bins a lot, I don’t want to see anything in my smart bins except the clips which meet the search criteria. There is absolutely zero value in seeing grayed out versions of clips which do not meet the criteria, and it would add unnecessary noise to the search results.

A more sensible solution would be for smart bins and media pool search results to have an indicator in the results window that displays the number of items found by the search. For example perhaps a single line in the header of the results window that says “Smart Bin results: $NUMBER_OF_CLIPS_FOUND clips found”

This makes it clear that the current view is a search results/Smart Bin filter, and not a normal Bin view.

I thin new users reading the manual is the best solution.

I would vote "no change" here.

This isn't a bad suggestion, and would make for a better UX, provided the filtered results show at the top, and the rest are separated clearly.

Having said that, it's pretty low priority, and I'd rather Blackmagic focus on the many more important UI issues still present.

Could definitely add this one to the list though.

My suggestion to this problem would be to let the search function default to all bins instead of the currently selected bin, a feature I only recently found out about (thanks Jim). I don't really know when I'd need to search inside an open bin, but am often searching from the project root.

I must reiterate that “graying out” media in search lists is a shortsighted solution to the actual problem, which is the fact that it’s often not immediately obvious that the Media Pool view is in a Search results or Smart Bins mode.

Again, there is absolutely no value in seeing clips in a listing which don’t meet your search/smart filter criteria. Imagine if every time you did a Google search, it would also return links to sites that had absolutely nothing to do with your search terms? That’s unnecessary visual noise that doesn’t help you focus on the data you’re looking for.

Another possible solution (in addition to my original suggestion of adding an “items found” summary header in search results) would be to make clips that are found via a search or smart bin filter appear in the listings with italicized text or a different color/weight than standard bin views. That makes it immediately clear that the list view is a result of a filtering/search operation, and not just a standard view.

Imagine if every time you did a Google search, it would also return links to sites that had absolutely nothing to do with your search terms?

Well, it works for Google.

/kidding.

I'm honestly not really attached to the whole dimmed/disabled/sorted-to-bottom approach, but as it stands, there's nearly zero indication that the media pool is filtered, and I think it causes a lot of confusion.

Try this: click into the search field of the media pool, type a space, and press return, and watch for any indication that you're filtering the media pool. Other than the word "search" disappearing (along with any clips that don't contain whitespace), what indication do you see? An "X" in the search field, that's it.

Would you have honestly known that the "X" wasn't always there anyway, if we weren't having this discussion? It could very easily be a permanent fixture.

Of course, you might object that you're never going to search for whitespace.

But I'd argue that having any word in the search field actually camouflages the fact that you're filtering *more* because the box usually contains the word "Search" when you're not searching for anything, and it takes some amount of cognitive overhead to diff the word "Search" with whatever you searched for last, and that this comparison occurs in the language-oriented portion of your brain, not a visual/pattern recognition portion, which is what's most engaged when you're looking for a clip. That's just science.

But yeah, your suggestions are fine, too. I'd be OK with them, or really any kind of visual feedback here.

But I'd argue that having any word in the search field actually camouflages the fact that you're filtering *more* because the box usually contains the word "Search" when you're not searching for anything, and it takes some amount of cognitive overhead to diff the word "Search" with whatever you searched for last, and that this comparison occurs in the language-oriented portion of your brain, not a visual/pattern recognition portion, which is what's most engaged when you're looking for a clip. That's just science.

I might be misunderstanding your skepticism about my suggestion about of a "search results indicator", but to clarify, I am suggesting that the "Search items found:" indicator text would appear in a header in the actual bin view, not in the actual Search field itself.

Here's a couple of ideas I mocked up that show what I was envisioning:

I might be misunderstanding your skepticism about my suggestion about of a "search results indicator

I'm not skeptical about your suggestions at all. They're good. I endorse them and support them. When I said "But yeah, your suggestions are fine too, I'd be OK with them" I didn't mean to sound dismissive. I really am completely fine with just a little "No results found."

The images you've posted have me a little confused, though. Those are mockups, correct? That's not what I see in Resolve 17.0 now.

When I enter a search term with no results, this is what I see:

now

Screen Shot 2021-02-27 at 2003.jpg (64.24 KiB) Viewed 1759 times

And when I clear the search field, this is what it looks like:

clear

Screen Shot 2021-02-27 at 1954.jpg (110.16 KiB) Viewed 1759 times

What I'm saying is that my two images are too similar, that there's currently no good indication that the user is performing a search. I intentionally searched for a word that's visually similar to the word "Search," which populates the field when it's empty, to better illustrate the potential for confusion.

If your two images are not a mockup, then maybe I've got a bug in my installation, and that would explain why we're not seeing eye-to-eye.

Yes, my images were mock-ups to illustrate how I envisioned an improved search/filter view to work, so that it’s obvious that the bin is a filtered view, and not simply an empty/partial bin.

I do agree that having the Search field literally pre-populated with the word “Search” is a poor UI design decision. Although to be honest, I can’t say it has ever affected me enough to find it annoying or confusing, since if I ever need to focus on the search field, it’s to actually type in a new search term, and not because I expect the current bin view to reflect whatever search term has been currently entered and is actively showing the results of.