Using amarok 1.4.3 on Ubuntu Edgy Eft. 

I created a Smart Playlist called "Jazz" that pulls all tracks where genre contains the word(s) "Jazz" or "Chillout" or "Big Band".  I tested loading the Smart Playlist and it works fine -- all tracks with "Jazz", "Chillout" or "Big Band" in the genre field appear. 

Then I tried creating a Dynamic Playlist called "A Time To Chill" that uses "Jazz" with "played tracks to show" = 5 and "upcoming tracks" = 10.  It only loaded one track -- the same single track consistently, in fact.  No other tracks ever loaded. 

So I right-clicked on "A Time To Chill" and selected "Edit", and I noticed that the "Jazz" smartlist was not checked (odd), so I checked it and clicked OK.  Didn't work -- same behavior -- the one track loaded and that was it.  I right-clicked "A Time To Chill" again and "Jazz" was unchecked!  I repeated this a few times and the changes never stuck. 

I tried the following:

+ Changing the "tracks" values.  This did not fix the problem.

+ Editing the dynamic playlist's entry in dynamicbrowser_save.xml manually like so:

Code: Select all

<items>Jazz,</items>

.  This didn't work either.

+ Right-clicking "Jazz" in the playlist browser and selecting "Add to the A Time To Chill entries".  This worked temporarily -- "Jazz" was marked with a yellow star and when I clicked "Repopulate", other tracks from "Jazz" would then appear.  However, once I clear the playlist window or turn off "A Time To Chill", the changes do not stick.  I have to follow these steps every time I want to play "A Time To Chill" with the desired tracks. 

+ Adding another smartlist (called "Cover Songs", just as a random troubleshooting effort) by right-clicking it and "Add[ing] to the A Time To Chill entries".  This worked as expected -- entries from "Cover Songs" now appeared in the Dynamic Playlist.  But when I cleared the Dynamic Playlist and tried re-loading it, "Cover Songs" was still associated with it but "Jazz" was not!  But now it gets ever stranger:

+ After adding "Cover Songs" to "A Time To Chill", I cleared and re-loaded "A Time To Chill".  "Cover Songs" had a yellow star by it while "Jazz" did not.  Then I right-clicked "Cover Songs" and "Remove[d] from A Time To Chill".  The yellow star next to "Cover Songs" disappeared and the one next to "Jazz" appeared!  When I clear "A Time To Chill" and re-load it from this point, though, my problem comes back -- "A Time To Chill" is not pulling from "Jazz". 

+ Deleting "A Time To Chill" and re-creating it, selecting only "Jazz" from the available Smart Playlists.  Doesn't work. 

+ Closing Amarok, reopening it and trying any of this stuff.  No go. 

I have two other Dynamic Playlists that work fine.  Why is this particular one refusing to load properly?  I don't know if this is a bug or if I'm simply not aware of some quirk of Amarok's playlist system, but it just doesn't make sense.  Help!

I sometimes notice only one track initially loads, but if i then hit play, on trackchange the playlist populates as usual.

One thing to check though... do any of your custom smart playlists share the same name as any of the predefined ones? That might cause problems.

One thing to check though... do any of your custom smart playlists share the same name as any of the predefined ones? That might cause problems.

There it was.  Under Collection > Genres there are two predefined smartlists that pull tracks with the genre as "Jazz."  In fact, here's what's weird: one was "jazz" (lowercase) and the other was "Jazz" (uppercase).  My one rogue track was labeled as "jazz" (lower) and it was the only track in my whole collection tagged that way.  "A Time To Chill" was attempting to pull ONLY files tagged "jazz" (lower) -- which amounted to this one track. 

I changed the name of my custom smartlist to something unique and re-created my dynamic list, and this fixed the problem.  My dynamic list now works like I want it to.  Thank you so much!

However, this brings up an interesting point: since I DID have another predefined playlist under "Genres" named "Jazz" (upper), why wouldn't Amarok pull from that one too?

Upgrade to 1.4.4 first and then try all this again...

http://kubuntu.org/announcements/amarok-1.4.4.php

mightyteegar wrote:

One thing to check though... do any of your custom smart playlists share the same name as any of the predefined ones? That might cause problems.

There it was.  Under Collection > Genres there are two predefined smartlists that pull tracks with the genre as "Jazz."  In fact, here's what's weird: one was "jazz" (lowercase) and the other was "Jazz" (uppercase).  My one rogue track was labeled as "jazz" (lower) and it was the only track in my whole collection tagged that way.  "A Time To Chill" was attempting to pull ONLY files tagged "jazz" (lower) -- which amounted to this one track. 

I changed the name of my custom smartlist to something unique and re-created my dynamic list, and this fixed the problem.  My dynamic list now works like I want it to.  Thank you so much!

However, this brings up an interesting point: since I DID have another predefined playlist under "Genres" named "Jazz" (upper), why wouldn't Amarok pull from that one too?

Amarok is case sensitive with artists - it may well be case sensitive with genres too.

@Stokedfish: It happens to me with svn from time to time.