[FEATURE] Aspect ratio and other technical characteristics as filters

[aulerius]

Is there any reason aspect ratio is only a sorting option, but not a filter option? I just made the purchase assuming it is already possible, oops.

I think the following technical characteristics of videos are essential to be able to filter by and not yet possible:

• aspect ratio
• width and height separately in pixels
• framerate
• bitrate (if known)
• audio and video format/codec (if known)

What problem does this solve?

Being able to both filter and sort by these technical characteristics is often essential for most professional or hobby video work

Proposed Solution

Besides including these as toggles in the settings, I'd argue that a broader implementation could be considered that would unify filters, sorting, and details view to all pull from the same set of globally implemented metadata. I see some of these are available at one place, but not the other. (like bitrate is seen in details view, but not as a filter option). The same set of characteristics would also be useful to toggle on/off display of in something like text view.

I personally would also gladly use a simple expression field for unified, flexible filtering where we could enter metadata variables like for instance {fps} or {width} and use comparators >, <, =, and combined conditions to build our own filters.
Perhaps this implementation would be easier on the UI and would cover most advanced use cases?

Thanks!

[whyboris]

@aulerius thank you for purchasing my app 😊 sorry the feature you expected wasn't there 😔

I'm thrilled there are also power users of the app that want even more filtering abilities. There isn't a technical reason this feature isn't yet available: I focused on features I wanted for myself, and then added features others requested often. Since the width and height of videos are already in the .vha2 file, if the filter is added in the future, it will be available across all your hubs.

Thank you for the suggestion of a flexible search input. I aimed at a UI (user interface) that makes it intuitive for anyone, even without a lot of computer experience, to use. I shied away from some DSL (domain specific language) for an input bar that users would need to learn how to use; though I see how if it's an optional additional feature, it might work.

I think for consistency it may be easiest to include the filters you request using the same user interface as my other sliders and input fields, though I'd want to think about each individually to see.

If you feel comfortable enough copy-pasting some files and editing a few lines of code, you might be able to include the features you'd like in your own build of the app (I can help answer questions along the way). Unfortunately I won't have time to add features to VHA until end of summer at the earliest, and this feature would likely wait until after my intended end-of-summer minor-feature update release.

Thank you again for the suggestion of the additional filters - I will keep it in mind (especially that it might not be too much work to add at least a few of these -- all the while not cluttering the UI since they will be optional - hidden until the user enables them in settings).

For anyone interested in these features: comment and/or add a 👍 on the Issue. Also, a PR is welcome 😊