Hello everybody,
I hope this post is not a duplicate, as I searched for 3 days in the forum, the bug report and the mail archives but with no luck.

I am using Amarok 2.3.1 with KDE 4.4.3, Xine as the Phonon backend, libxine1 1.1.19-2 on a Debian Squeeze AMD64 machine.

My issue occurs when a track in the playlist has a special character in the filename:

• if Amarok is playing and the play reaches that track, it stops;
• if Amarok is stopped and I double-click the track, it is immediately skipped and the next one is played (if any).

The track score and playcount fields are not updated.

I would like to specify that this problem occurs when special characters are in the path, not only in the filename. For example:

• /home/gunther/musiha/John De Leo/Vago Svanendo/06 Tilt (C'è Mattia_).mp3 - special char in the filename
• /home/gunther/musiha/Bandabardò/Se mi rilasso collasso/1 - 05 - Ewa.ogg - special char in a parent directory

are both skipped.
Instead of this behavior, tags and filenames show up correctly in the playlist and in the database:

Code: Select all

mysql> SELECT artist, title from tracks WHERE title LIKE '%però%';
+--------+-----------------------------------------+
| artist | title                                   |
+--------+-----------------------------------------+
|    586 | Wanda, stai seria con la faccia ma però |
+--------+-----------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)

I guess I have no default encoding for connections to my mysql server:

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gunther@hell:~$ mysql --print-defaults
mysql would have been started with the following arguments:
--port=3306 --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

The amarok2 (my collection database) uses utf8:

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mysql> status;
--------------
mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.49, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.1

Connection id:          66
Current database:       amarok2
Current user:           root@localhost
SSL:                    Not in use
Current pager:          stdout
Using outfile:          ''
Using delimiter:        ;
Server version:         5.1.49-1 (Debian)
Protocol version:       10
Connection:             Localhost via UNIX socket
Server characterset:    latin1
Db     characterset:    utf8
Client characterset:    latin1
Conn.  characterset:    latin1
UNIX socket:            /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Uptime:                 --------------


My collection resides on a reiserfs filesystem. I always had both utf8 and iso8859-1 support (modules) in my kernel, but I switched the default one from utf8 to iso8859-1 during the last compile, hoping this would solve, but with no luck.

I guess this behavior is different from this bug, because my tracks with special chars in the filename are indexed correctly in the database and their tags show up in the playlist.

I also read this thread on the mailing-list, but I think it doesn't refer to my case.

Thanks in advance for your kind help.

Bye!

Since no one has answered here I just want to bump this thread because I have the same problem.

Files from the Album Ænima aren't played neither in Amarok nor VLC. Clementine plays them also does mplayer.

You did not specify which Phonon backend and Amarok version you are using, nor if you have your system locale and id3 tags set to UTF.

This issue should be solved since quite some time in both Amarok and Phonon, provided you use UTF of course.

Hi,

sorry for the lack of information.

I filed a bug report here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266719

The problem only occurcs with phonon-vlc and my system is set to utf.

It is important to also have the id3 tags written with UTF encoding, you can do that easily with easytag or kid3.

I already tried this, using easytag.

Clementine and mplayer play the tracks without problems.

This was a bug in that particular Phonon backend, now fixed in the latest version: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266719#c5

Now you only need to wait till your distribution ships this backend version, or else use another phonon backend instead.

Many, many thanks Mamarok for pointing me in the right direction.

Can you please point me to a source where I can find when the new backend will be released? Or which backend I should use instead.

It's probably unrelated but sometimes I can't change track tags (Title, Author, etc...) nor the cover image file.
I thought it was related to file/folder permissions, but

• I ran

  Code: Select all

  chmod -R 755

  on the root of my music directory tree, and this didn't resolved
• I use the MySQL database, so I think the tags are stored there

Regards

id3 tags are stored in the files, so if you can't write to files something is wrong with the permission.

There have been several backend releases since your last post, also in Debian. Of course to have to make sure you use the latest package sources aka sid, I doubt you will find the newest packages in stable or wheezy.

Also please make sure you use a recent Amarok version, the latest release is 2.5, the one before was 2.4.3

SOLVED! Now I can play tracks I cant' even remember I had!
I just went to settings -> multimedia and set the following priority in the backend tab:
1) VLC 2) GStreamer 3) XINE

If you don't have these options you may want to install the packages:

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apt-get install phonon-backend-gstreamer phonon-backend-xine phonon-backend-vlc

Thanks to Mamarok and the whole KDE community! Keep up the good work!

Please do not use the phonon-backend-xine anymore, it is deprecated and unmaintained since quite some time now.

Okay, just removed the phonon-backend-xine package. Thanks

Hi,
I am using Amarok since the beginning!. I am now using Amarok 2.8.0 in KDE 4.13.3 in a Kubuntu 14.04.
I have problem with some files. The filenames are in UTF-8 with special characters ("á" for example) are not displayed in the playlist.
Amarok somehow manages to see the files (and the tags are coded correctly in UTF-8) the "file" list, but it does not appear the local collection.
I have also checked the tag with kid3 and the tags are in UTF-8. The same problem with Clementine. In Clementine is even worst, I can't even edit the tag.
The problem is "easily" solved changing the filenames (for example: Alacrán -> Alacrán) but the filesnames were generated automatically from K3b ripping the original CD, in the same machine (UTF-8 encoding set). Yet I don't know how many other albums I had "improperly" seen.
I don't know where else to look for. Any clue will be most welcome.
thanks

You need to make sure you do not have special characters in the filename, as those have much tighter restrictions than the ID3 tags where accented characters should cause no problems. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename# ... _and_words for the characters one should never use in a filename.

When ripping with K3b, you can restrict the filename use to your system settings which avoids special characters in filenames.

As for UTF-8: of course this only works if your system also is UTF-8 only, you should check your LOCALE settings. See also https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Locale