I wanna sort songs by folder structure, but theres only has artist, album, composer and genre for organizing at local collection (my music library).

have any idea? thanks.

amarok version 2.3.0

what do you mean by "folder structure"?

google01103 wrote:what do you mean by "folder structure"?

I have my songs sorted already by using folders like artist/album/songs. Some of songs have no tag.

Is there anyway to let me browse my songs' directory according to the structure it already has in Collection View?

thank you

Use the File Browser? Or do you want to reorganize your music collection with that structure?
I strongly suggest you tag your collection, there are a few automatic taggers out there, like easytag, kid3 or picard, you should consider running one of them to get better tags.

Mamarok wrote:Use the File Browser? Or do you want to reorganize your music collection with that structure?
I strongly suggest you tag your collection, there are a few automatic taggers out there, like easytag, kid3 or picard, you should consider running one of them to get better tags.

Thanks for your suggestion, I will try to use those tag tools

But I still wanna know whether amarok Collection could sorting like File Browser or not.. File Browser is almost like what I need, just one thing trouble me that I don't wanna into any folder, I wanna expand each of these folders.

No, there currently is no way to sort the Collection Browser by folder tree, as it is not a very common way to search and display the collection.

But since your folder structure is artist/album/track, then this is exactly the same way the browser displays the collection anyway.

Mamarok wrote:No, there currently is no way to sort the Collection Browser by folder tree, as it is not a very common way to search and display the collection.

Well, it's hardly surprising that it isn't common, if it isn't possible, is it?

Being able to browse your collection in the way it exists on disk would be something I'd like, and it is something that I miss in Amarok.

If you, like me, have a collection that's been around for longer than Amarok, you probably have structure in it that you'd very much like to take with you into the players you use. Without the ability to even see that structure in Amarok, it's tricky to create playlists and such in Amarok that mirrors the structure already present in the file tree.

I've tried by importing the entire collection into a playlist, and using the directory/filename sort options, but I find that a very blunt instrument to import that directory I put together for the Summer 2003 holiday, and which we played on shuffle+repeat all summer long in the car.

You didn't quote my second line: since your folder structure is Artist/Album/Track, I don't see where the problem is, as this is the default way the Collection Browser shows the collection. Of course, if you haven't tagged your collection correctly, this can't work.

Don't blame Amarok for lack of correct tags in your collection, this is definitely not it's fault.

Mamarok wrote:Of course, if you haven't tagged your collection correctly, this can't work.

Of course it can work(for most). It worked in Amarok 1.x and in most players that i used. Order it by filename if there are no track number tag. That would be best solution imho. Most of the songs in albums that don't contain proper tags would be in order if you sort it by file name.
I have the same problem with playlists. Album songs without track numbers are not in correct order.

Mamarok wrote:You didn't quote my second line: since your folder structure is Artist/Album/Track, I don't see where the problem is, as this is the default way the Collection Browser shows the collection. Of course, if you haven't tagged your collection correctly, this can't work.

Don't blame Amarok for lack of correct tags in your collection, this is definitely not it's fault.

I assume this comment was directed to me...

Did you read the rest of what I wrote? Having every track tagged properly or not will not make any difference whatsoever, as the point of being able to browse the collection by folder structure is to see and access this structure.

If you go back and look at my example, where I have a directory consisting of "the songs of the summer 2003 vacation", it'll be pretty clear that the tags of the songs are no help. If correct, they will show up in various places in the Artist/Album/Track view. Indeed, I would have to mistag the tracks to enable Amarok to display the structural information embedded in the directory structure.

As I, again, mentioned in my previous message, some of us have humped around our music collection for quite some time, and have considerable contextual information embedded in the organization of the files on disk.

It would, therefore, be very desirable if Amarok could expose this information, if only to permit it to be conveniently imported into Amarok as playlists etc.

Did you have a look at the Files browser?

Mamarok wrote:Did you have a look at the Files browser?

Ah yes, the File browser. Yes I did, have you tried using it?

Any track imported into a playlist via the file browser will initially show up with a zero score, zero rating, unknown last played, despite that same file already being in your collection with metadata. To add insult to injury, Amarok won't even show the tags correctly for files imported this way: for a track that has "Various Artists" as the album artist and the actual artist as the artist tag, it will be listed as "Various Artists" in the play list.

The exact same file loaded from the collection browser will show the correct tags, as well as correctly displaying and updating all the Amarok metadata. Ah, but Amarok does apparently does track metadata for files imported this way. It's just that it considers the file a separate entity from the song in the collection. So now I have two entries in the database for every song, one for the collection entry, one for the file.

I've painstakingly rated about 80% of my collection in the past year since switching to Amarok, and was sorta hoping to get to the end of it in the coming month. I don't cherish the thought of having to do that all over again with the file browser versions of every song.

So no, using the file browser is not a solution. Perhaps this is a bug (the tag-thing certainly is), but on a conceptual level, it makes sense that they are separate.

rocketsurgeon wrote:The exact same file loaded from the collection browser will show the correct tags, as well as correctly displaying and updating all the Amarok metadata. Ah, but Amarok does apparently does track metadata for files imported this way. It's just that it considers the file a separate entity from the song in the collection. So now I have two entries in the database for every song, one for the collection entry, one for the file.

I've painstakingly rated about 80% of my collection in the past year since switching to Amarok, and was sorta hoping to get to the end of it in the coming month. I don't cherish the thought of having to do that all over again with the file browser versions of every song.

Could you please report this as a bug here: http://bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=amarok ?

Mamarok wrote:Could you please report this as a bug here: http://bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=amarok ?

I reported the issue with the tags, since that's clearly a straight up bug, but the issue with songs imported through the file browser vs the collection browser wasn't as clear cut to me.

Lets say we call this a bug, and that the song imported through the file browser and the collection browser should be treated as the same object.

What, then, if I copy the file to another directory and import it with the file browser? Still the same object?

What if I then modify the tags of the copied file? Should the collection object be updated and the new tags shown? Or should Amarok show the old tags from the collection object instead of the ones in the file I actually imported?

My crystal ball is cloudy on the subject, so I was hoping there was someone out there who had thought about this and may be able to weigh in, but my feeling it that on a conceptual level, it makes sense to separate collection objects from file objects, but then we're back to needing (well, to be fair, wanting) a way to import the structure of the file system into the Amarok collection.

Also I was surprised, that Amarok doesn't support basic function as "sorting by folder structure" really is. Most of as, new KDE users, came to Amarok from Windows and almost all of its mp3 players has "sorting by folder structure" and 90% of people use this function instead "never working" sorting by id3 tag.
So I would like to ask the Amarok team to build this function, otherwise, Amarok is unusable for me.