I have thousands of music files, not a few hundred. I've Cherry picked select tracks from my CD, DVD, TAPE and Vinyl collections and organised them by Artist and, in some instances, by albums. It is ALREADY organised. I do not need, NOR DO I WANT, pretty little pictures associated with my files. All I want and ALL I NEED is a listing of the artists and tracks associated with those artists ... in a full directory structure.

Why view maybe a dozen pictures that are as often wrong as not, or a listing of my music in "VARIOUS ARTISTS" when they are NOT?

I picked songs from Best of the '80s and so on, slotted them into the artist's folder.
The song was done by that particular artist, not by BEST OF THE '80s ... or worse, VARIOUS ARTISTS!

I want to see lines of text with maybe a very small icon denoting a folder. Not a HUGE picture that takes up a major chunk of screen. When I want to look at pictures, I turn to my rather extensive picture and photograph collection. I'm listening to music, not watching television or reading a picture book. I only view my picture collection as an Icons, or Thumbnails. I want to see file details, not pictures. I have attended university. I am NOT in nursery school, where I need to use PICTURE BOOKS.

Is there a way to FOCE Amarok to do this or not? If not, WHY not? Sorting only by ID3 tags is for the birds. It would take WEEKS to go through my entire collection. I have over 90 days of UNIQUE songs I could listen to and taggers like kid3 and Easytag do NOT handle the situation well. I spent the last three days sorting and I haven't gotten through a tenth of my collection yet! I've been collecting music electronically since MP3s were introduced! Not only that, MOST of my files are in a lossless format, not a VERY LOSSY format like MP3 and some of those formats do not support ID3 Tags.

Please, DO NOT suggest I give up audio quality and convert the files, OR that I use a tagger. I have transcoders and tagging software. FIrst, I will NOT use a substandard file format. Second, there isn't a tagger that will do the job quickly, efficiently and, most importantly, CORRECTLY, for ALL the files.

Wendy-J

if your collection is already organized in the desired file structure then use the file browser in the sources panel instead of "local music"

remember you're not limited to Amarok for accessing you collection as there are other KDE, QT, Gnome and Java apps and even Windows ones running under Wine that can be used if they fit your requirements.

google01103 wrote:if your collection is already organized in the desired file structure then use the file browser in the sources panel instead of "local music"

remember you're not limited to Amarok for accessing you collection as there are other KDE, QT, Gnome and Java apps and even Windows ones running under Wine that can be used if they fit your requirements.

So basically, if you want a simple format, one that doesn't suck up a HUGE amount of system resources, and can let you create play lists on the fly, forget it and stick with using something like SMPlayer, since players like Amarok can't recognise a directory tree? I can't skim down the list, click on the songs I want and say, PLAY, because it CAN'T do something that simple? It has to be more complex than it needs to be?

The reason I sound so frustrated is, I thought organising my music and synchronising it was using a database synch routine. Now I'm reorganising the results of my mistake from Banshee. I figured something that USED to work, as it seemed to work when I was running Boo-Boo 9, would CONTINUE to work. Instead, like with Doze, Amarok has stripped SIMPLE functionality from it's user interface and is forcing people to DUMB DOWN.

If I wanted to use SMPlayer from the file system, as I fight to create a simple play list, I wouldn't have written to ask if there was a way to make AMAROK behave as a simple music player with access to my directory tree, so that I could click on a song to add to the play list. Your response sounds more like someone doing an akembe, (pulling down of the lower eyelid, while sticking out one's tongue). If that was NOT your intent, I'll apologise now for my terse response.

I'm Sorry.

Yes, I know Linux is all about choice...choice that seems to get stripped away with each successive iteration, witness Amarok not listing my directory tree and allowing me one click access to my media library. I was hoping for a command line command to force a directory tree, or to make Amarok IGNORE ID3 Tags completely.

Wendy

If you don't want to see the album pictures, disable those, if you do want Amarok to show only a single line per track, modify the layout, all this is configurable. Please have a look at the handbook, everything is explained: http://userbase.kde.org/Amarok/Manual

But in no case are we going to criple Amarok to ignore ID3 tgs, sorry. If Amarok doesn't suit your needs, you are free to use any other audio player out there...

As for the directory tree: use the files browser integrated in Amarok.

FWIW: there are other mass-tagger out there, Picard does most of the work in a totally automated way, using MusicBrainz to get the tags.

Mamarok wrote:If you don't want to see the album pictures, disable those, if you do want Amarok to show only a single line per track, modify the layout, all this is configurable. Please have a look at the handbook, everything is explained: http://userbase.kde.org/Amarok/Manual

But in no case are we going to criple Amarok to ignore ID3 tgs, sorry. If Amarok doesn't suit your needs, you are free to use any other audio player out there...

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

There are a few things that frustrate me about the new players. One is how the manual and documentation isn't downloaded when the programme is installed. To view the instructions, you have to view them ON LINE. My music server is NOT on line. It's behind a firewall that precludes anything from out of house accessing it, as well as it accessing the outside. With all the videos and music, not to mention viri, it's a matter of maintaining security with a system that is on all the time, even when I'm not there. Only the machines on our "in house" network can access it.

Another irritant is how the help bubbles are as incomprehensible as the item they're put there to describe. That's how I wound up with a fragmented, renamed and restructured music library I'm STILL fighting to recover from. I thought I was making changes to a database, not the actual directory structure. Files were renamed and relocated before I was aware of what was happening. No, it did not happen with Amarok. However, I shudder to think of what damage I could have done ... with either programme.

Early on, I collected music to match my vinly and tape collection. Many of the songs I downloaded were in high quality formats, yet the tags were incorrect. One perfect example was a tune I downloaded by England Dan and John Ford Coley. It was mis-tagged for David Gates & Bread. Banshee renamed the file and moved it, it didn't copy the song to a new spot on my drive under a new name.

Yes, with Amarok I CAN access my files via the directory structure. HOWEVER, there is no tree format. Unlike with, say, Caja, since I use Mint 17, I can't click a directory to open it, while remaining in the very same place I was. I go into that directory, rather than just viewing the contents of it. I wind up stuck in the directory and am unable to return to the same location I was in before. It's not as simple as you make it sound.

Yes, I can select from a directory by double clicking. Then, Amarok takes me back to the start of my music directory...a directory that streches several thousand artists, genres, etc.... I could be at, say, Don McLean, where I'll select American Pie. Back out and I'm BACK to 10cc. It's not as simple as you say.

As for what you said about pictures ... yes, I can change how I view things, I know. However, in the default view, whether there is art or not, there is an icon ... icons that take up resources to display them. I don't want YOU to criple the player. I want to be able to tell it to ignore part of the programming, while leaving the functionality. I'd like it to create a database that does not use ID3 tags and uses my directory tree, a feature that Amarok does not seem to facilitate, even though Nautilus, the programme Caja is based on and taken from, has a lovely way of accessing and nesting the tree structure in the main pane. The code is there, yet it's not utilised. That was the point I was making. As for cripling the system, I want it to ignore the tags completly, saving resources, while creating the database, giving me "Real Time" access to the directories and keeping up with that database. Why utilise a database programme if it isn't usable? Better stil, why can't the player store what it reads when I bring up those directories?

Yes, I'm moaning the blues and I am in a highly agitated state. I'm not screaming at you. I'm furious and there's no-one for me to scream at but myself. I even know that. I wouldn't be searching for a music player that was truly smart, if i was truly smart. If I wasn't stupid when I made the mistake I did with Banshee, I wouldn't be here, looking at and trying to make a rather interesting bit of code play my music. I clicked a radio button I didn't fully understand and said Apply! I didn't understand it for the same reason I don't understand Amarok. The requisite documentation DID NOT COME WITH THE PLAYER.

Amarok COULD be great, not simply good. The code is all there, all it has to do is utilise it. M$ has been doing that for years. They did it intentionally in their attempts to force people who had their Doze environments using their web browser. However, Linux apps like Amarok COULD utilise the code other projects have written.

I use the Mate desktop, yet I DO use many KDE apps. Hence my looking over Amarok. I just don't like the main KDE interface. Choice, as you and I both took the pains to point out earlier.

Again, I thank you for replying.

You didn't answer my question, yet you did. In essence, you said, don't use Amarok or any of the other music players that are available today. Keep on as I have in the past, dragging and dropping songs from the directory into SMPlayer, or other similar very basic player's play lists, then editing them in a text editor. I was hoping for too much. I wanted a player that truly keeps an accurate if minimal database that is dependent on simple file structure, rather than one that has to open and read every file I have on my drive. It takes Amarok a great deal of time to scan what I have. Even then, it insists on odd sorts of things, putting files into various artists, unknown album, unknown artist and more, when just a look at the directory, "The Beatles", should have given it a clue. Maybe the file name? The Beatles - The Beatles - Rocky Raccoon.flac, for Artist: The Beatles; Album: The Beatles (Otherwise known as the White Album); File Title: Rocky Raccoon; File type: flac. As I don't run a radio station, the year the album came out is irrelevant to me, I want to hear about Rocky in a musical format.

What I see is a player designed for use with my mobile telephone and touch screens, not a computer with a variety of human interface devices.

I wish I could use Amarok. It seems the developers don't care about keeping it simple.

Thank you for your time.

As for satisfied with the answer, I'm not. If you are, be my guest and close the topic as UNRESOLVED, DISGRUNTLED and file it under SOUR GRAPES. All of those would apply.

I do appologise for my poor attitude.

My only excuse is that I'm STILL fixing MY cockup caused by MY using software that doesn't come with documentation -- Amarok included. A simple MAN file would have been nice. Instead I had to go to another room to sit down at a computer that's on the net to read the docs that should have been downloaded with the software in the first place. I couldn't RTFM, since TFM wasn't there to begin with.

I do hope you're having a better day than I am. It seems I'm going to be weeks sorting the mess I caused when I screwed up and made an assumption, that the software only uses a database to organise things, rather than taking it upon itself to completely reorganise and restructure what was once well organised, making an incomprehensible mess in the process.

Like I said, that isn't YOUR fault, nor is it Amarok's. If I were in the Banshee forums, I'd be doing more than simply spitting feathers. All I wanted was to see how their database would look, NOT my drive's directory tree! Silly me. Bet Amarok would do the same if I organised and synchronised. I was hoping to use this. Guess I won't. That's a shame. If it used my file names, It would even be able to give me the same sorts of things it does when it accesses Wikipedia to tell me about the artists who did whatever song, OR even give me the lyrics. There's no need to get INTO the file at all. I'm still trying to figure out why it can't be simple matter of reading the file name and giving a directory TREE.

Wendy

About the handbook: that entirely depends on the distribution, we ship the Handbook with the version, the online Handbook is just an additional feature... check the Help menu, if it is not there, then you probably simply didn't install it.

You seem to have a slight misconception about what a Free Software product like Amarok is and how it is developed: we all work on it in our free time, which is rare, so don't expect miracles.

Apparently you don't want Amarok, so why don't you have a look at other products instead of ranting about a product you obviously don't want (and nobody forces you to use it, mind you, all your own choice)? There is enough choice around. Blaming the developers for not having the player YOU want is a bit cheap. In Free Software there is a saying: scratch your own itch, so if you are not happy with what is around, how about making your own or pay us to implement the features you want? Mind you, crippling Amarok of its central features that seem to be the ones you can't live with is very unlikely to happen...

Consider this topic as closed.