Hi all,

Just updated a system to Kubuntu 18.04 and wanted to start using Amarok in earnest. I've not really used it before - mostly just been using mplayer to play audio files.

However, I just started using Amarok 2.9.0 on KDE 4.14.38 - stock Kubuntu 18.04 install.

Added 41 playlists from some classical albums. Did so by clearing the playlist, dragging and dropping from the appropriate file folder, saving the playlist, rinse and repeat.

When I close and restart Amarok, the saved playlists are mostly missing. Some (like the Brahms there) are completely missing.

I've done this twice now. Same result each time.

Am I doing something wrong?

I tried letting it auto-create as well, but, that didn't help either.

It:

a.) did not recreate the playlists.

b.) it removed what it considered duplicates but which were 2nd or other movements of many 3 or 4 or more movement pieces.

Also, although I created an ordered playlist originally, where playlists were being partially remembered, they were not in the order I put them in (mostly, I corrected orderings where numbers were being used but the default numbering went something like: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,100,101,102, etc. and I moved the 100-> etc. below 99. Didn't stick.

Here are some pics:

https://app.box.com/s/8vhw88jwzwvclej48mjfhb09503lb51c
https://app.box.com/s/n7m13tpvd5mt5bnto5w8gqvix7g45yut
https://app.box.com/s/y5tx1um8de7xfagihzte9vnk3fk97d6r
https://app.box.com/s/69asay5bp750mmmx3fofcewc8qbgu2ku

Help appreciated.

Kind regards

Derek Jones

Hi there,

a few questions first:

*are all the tracks you put in the playlist in your database?
*are all folders and subfolders writeable where your music is? (assuming you talk about local music, not on a remote share or an NTS one)
*is the ordering based on ID3 tag naming or on the actual file names?

Thank you for the reply.

When you say: "in your database" I'm not sure how that's distinguished from creating a playlist in the database. Can you elucidate a bit more on that - there may be a step I'm missing.

All the folders and subfolders are writeable and on a local disk.

I'm ordering based on filename. I haven't changed any ID3 tags - these are tracks I've downloaded from Amazon purchases. If the mp3 ID3 tags are wrong (or perhaps in the case of the supposed duplicates it was removing second movements etc. - duplicated) then it would be a lot of work to go through and manually identify what needs changing. (I could write a Perl script to do it if it seems like the only way to get things updated and there were a lot of changes required).

Which leads me to the question that follows: - is Amarok using ID3 tags and not filenames for ordering when there is a big collection like some of these classical collections which can run to over 300 titles in the same "album".

Thanks again for the input thus far.

Kind regards

Derek.

derekjones wrote:Thank you for the reply.

When you say: "in your database" I'm not sure how that's distinguished from creating a playlist in the database. Can you elucidate a bit more on that - there may be a step I'm missing.

in your collection database I meant, as Amarok heavily relies on the collection. If those files have not been added to the collection it might be a tad problematic.

...
I'm ordering based on filename. I haven't changed any ID3 tags - these are tracks I've downloaded from Amazon purchases. If the mp3 ID3 tags are wrong (or perhaps in the case of the supposed duplicates it was removing second movements etc. - duplicated) then it would be a lot of work to go through and manually identify what needs changing. (I could write a Perl script to do it if it seems like the only way to get things updated and there were a lot of changes required).

There is no need for a script, there are automatic taggers out there like Kid3 or Picard, the latter using MusicBrainz by default as source. There is usually a bit manual work to do afterwards, but it is manageable even with a large collection. In Kid3 you can just use the filename to automatically write the ID3 tags. Theoretically you could also do it within Amarok, but external taggers are much faster for that task

Which leads me to the question that follows: - is Amarok using ID3 tags and not filenames for ordering when there is a big collection like some of these classical collections which can run to over 300 titles in the same "album".

It does indeed, so I suspect your problems being actually due to you not having ID3 tags at all. All the filtering usually relies on the ID3 tags, so I guess this could be related.

Thanks for your reply.

I completely cleared the DB and started over and did a rescan of the directory in which the actual music files are stored in the Configure Amarok section and it seems to have stuck OK this time

So - that is good! Thank you!

Might have been a corrupt DB from when I'd tried to use Amarok on a previous Kubuntu release in my home dir.

I'll deal with the ID3 tags on another occasion. I'll take a look at the tools you mentioned, but I'd quite like to write the Perl script to do it anyway

Your help and input much appreciated. Have a great evening.

Kind regards

Derek.