Hello all,

First time poster here. I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9,04 (Jaunty) and that resulted in an Amarok upgrade to 2.0.2 (Using KDE 4.2.2, although I'm using Gnome).

I've read a lot about tag issues, but the one I'm having seems different from all the others. I'm not having random songs tagged differently or album covers getting screwed up. What seems to have happened is that I've actually lost a lot of album covers. I've previously went through all my albums and used Amarok's "Fetch Cover" function to get the appropriate covers, but now most of them seem to be gone.

A second issue is that albums that are compilations don't show up under "Various Artist" anymore. They are listed under each individual artist. That makes for a very annoying track list. Is there a reason this happened? Anyone have a fix?

Like many Amarok users, I have a very large music collection and I would really rather not have to go through and retag everything. (especially if I would have to do it every time Amarok updates)

My music collection started years ago with iTunes and Tag and Rename. Now I've switched to Amarok. I still prefer Tag and Rename above other tag editors (I know, I know, there's easytag and many other open source alternatives, I just prefer Tag and Rename). However, I do have a couple of iPods and still need to use iTunes to sync them. Is this even possible? I'm not sure what tag version iTunes uses, or which version Amarok uses for that matter. Can anyone tell me the difference between these two programs and their use of tags?

Also, I think (but can't remember for sure) that I used SQLite originally (in Amarok 1.x). But I have read that Amarok 2.x will only use mysql now. Is this correct? Would this matter?

Thanks for all the help.

-Jeff

First of all, you should upgrade to Amarok 2.1.1 which is in the jaunty-backports repository, as Amarok 2.0.2 is quite old and outdated.

Currently, Cover fetching from Amazon doesn't work anymore, but there already is a patch available in current Amarok 2.2-git and a first beta release is due in a few weeks, you will just need to be patient there.

The "Various Artist" issue is at least partially solved in both 2.1.1 and 2.2-git, as I said, 2.0.2 is really outdated.

JFYI, I don't see why you would have to retag your collection. If those are tagged correctly, they should also be read correctly, just update your version

iPod support has been improved a lot in the recent Google Summer of Code project, I don't think there still are any major issues, but you will have to wait for 2.2 beta again for that

Mamarok wrote:First of all, you should upgrade to Amarok 2.1.1 which is in the jaunty-backports repository, as Amarok 2.0.2 is quite old and outdated.

OK, Tried that. It seems to have addressed the various artist issue. Although one compilation is still an issue in my collection. It is the compilation I was trying to fix with Tag and Rename. I still had to go in an set each individual song as "Show under various artists". No biggie, I can deal with changing one album. However, now that album shows up approximately 35 times in the Various Artists category. Very strange. Which leads to my ultimate question (scroll to bottom...)

Mamarok wrote:Currently, Cover fetching from Amazon doesn't work anymore, but there already is a patch available in current Amarok 2.2-git and a first beta release is due in a few weeks, you will just need to be patient there.

I wasn't really asking what happened to the "Fetch Album" feature. I was wondering why all the albums I used that feature on have reverted back to no album covers. To be more specific, I am wondering how amarok deals with album covers. Does it embed them in the tag when you use the "Fetch Album Cover" feature? (again leads back to my ultimate question. Scroll to bottom...)

Mamarok wrote:JFYI, I don't see why you would have to retag your collection. If those are tagged correctly, they should also be read correctly, just update your version

I would have to retag my collection depending on how Amarok reads tags. (and now for my ultimate question....) I assume amarok uses ID3v2? Anyone know which version specifically? (ID3v2.4 I assume?) Anyone know what iTunes uses? After spending an unbelievable amount of time retagging my entire collection a while back, and trying to use both iTunes and Amarok, (as well as many different tagging programs) I'm just frustrated with all the different versions of everything, and how each program seems to handle things differently. One program tags a file, and iTunes reads it fine, but Amarok doesn't. Another program reads and writes the tag and Amarok is happy, but iTunes doesn't read it correctly. It's all quite frustrating, and a huge time sink to have to continually deal with this. /endrant

Mamarok wrote:iPod support has been improved a lot in the recent Google Summer of Code project, I don't think there still are any major issues, but you will have to wait for 2.2 beta again for that

I will wait and see what the summer of code has produced, but currently version 2.x and higher of the ipod firmware (I have an iPod touch running V3.0) had to be jailbroken to be used with amarok. Not something I feel like dealing with right now. Again, we'll see what the SoC produces, but I need to connect my iPods to iTunes for the time being. As a result, I'm interested in using tags that will work in both iTunes and Amarok.

Thanks for your time.

Amarok tags id3v2.4, but reads also id3v1 and id3v2.3.
I'm using easytag configured to write id3v2.3, because there are some mp3-players with issues on v2.4.
And my iPod reads the tags fine, too. I don't use the monster called iTunes, because I fill my iPod (Gen 5.5 Video) manually.
A company, that ostracizes other apps from handling its player, should be banned. So this will be my last Apple product.
Maybe you're running into trouble with special chars, because Windoze seems to never learn POSIX and/or Unicode.
So generally don't use amarok for tagging.
Set Tag & Rename to write v2.3 and UTF-8, if you can, and you should be fine.
Your collection issue can be predicated by having more than 60 songs in one folder., although I think that this issue should be solved in 2.1.1.

m0nk

Thanks Dieter. I didn't know about the 60 song thing. I'll check that out.

My frustration with apple grows daily as well. That's why I went with the Android enabled Mytouch instead of an iPhone!

I tried easytag set to ID3v2.3, but had to use UTF-16. Easy tag wouldn't let me select UTF-8 with ID3v2.3, it was grayed out.

For some reason, some album covers still aren't showing up in amarok. They are embedded in the tag, I can see them in Easy tag, Tag and Rename, and MusicBrainz Picard. But some albums just aren't showing the album art in amarok, while others are. Very peculiar. I've tried resaving the tags as ID3v2.3, and as ID3v2.4, but it doesn't make any difference. I don't understand why some album covers are showing while others aren't, even though they are all tagged the same way. Any ideas?

Thanks all.

jdathela wrote:For some reason, some album covers still aren't showing up in amarok. They are embedded in the tag, I can see them in Easy tag, Tag and Rename, and MusicBrainz Picard. But some albums just aren't showing the album art in amarok, while others are. Very peculiar. I've tried resaving the tags as ID3v2.3, and as ID3v2.4, but it doesn't make any difference. I don't understand why some album covers are showing while others aren't, even though they are all tagged the same way. Any ideas?

Well, yes this is a bug already known since some time: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=176402

Don't know why there is a bug report, because this is NOT a bug, but a missing feature:
Amarok 2.x DOES NOT read embedded covers. You can add them, but they will be ignored ('til now).
The covers, which are visible to A2, are images in the corresponding folders.
So put an image in every album folder and you get covers, which you can use as folder icons, too.
Oh, and sorry for the UTF-8/UTF-16 thing, was a typo there.

m0nk

That's it! Thanks Dieter. Everything makes sense now. Too bad A2 doesn't read embedded images. I hope that feature is added soon!