Developing a Gameplay Video Manager for LaunchBox & Big Box — Looking for Feedback

[JulianG23]

Hey guys,

I’m currently developing a gameplay video manager specifically for LaunchBox and Big Box, and I’m curious if this is something other people would actually find useful.

I originally started building this app just for my own personal use. I wanted something that would let me clean up and better manage the gameplay videos in my own LaunchBox collection. But as I’ve continued developing it, it’s turning out a lot nicer and more capable than I originally expected, so I started thinking it might be worth sharing with the LaunchBox community.

The main idea is to give you more control over the gameplay videos already in your LaunchBox collection.

What it does:

• Lets you watch and scrub through your gameplay videos and choose exactly where you want the gameplay to start and end.
• Saves those Start/End points so you can control what portion of the video gets played without having to permanently edit the original.
• Lets you preview and loop the exact section you’ve selected.
• If you want to save hard-drive space, you can permanently trim everything outside those Start/End points.
• You can review the finished trim before replacing anything.
• If you replace the original LaunchBox video, the original is automatically backed up first.
• You can restore the original at any time if you’re not happy with the trimmed version.
• Once you’re satisfied, you can delete the backup and reclaim the extra space.
• It keeps track of which videos you’ve finished so you can work your way through a large collection.

I’m also planning YouTube integration for games where you don’t already have a gameplay video, but that’s an additional feature rather than the main purpose of the program.

The reason I started building this is that I have a pretty large LaunchBox library, and a lot of my videos have intros, title screens, menus, loading screens, or other stuff I’d rather skip and get straight to the gameplay. Some are also much longer than I actually need, which adds up to a lot of wasted drive space across a big collection.

I’ve already got most of the core functionality working. I’m currently finishing things up, working on tighter LaunchBox integration, testing different video formats and edge cases, and eventually packaging it for release.

I’m mainly posting this to gauge interest before I go much further with the release side of things.

Would you guys use something like this? And if so, is there anything you’d want a gameplay video manager like this to be able to do?