I am no expert in this app, but I do know that it is very good.

I have a few features that could be considered (although I guess that they may already be implemented, but I have not found out how to do them!)

1. Use an Album Cover browser to select the album you want to play. This one in for my wife who prefers pictures to words. ie. look at all the nice album covers, click one to play it.

2. Transcoding of audio formats. For example, I encode my CD\'s in FLAC but may want to convert them to OGG or MP3 (to dump onto a portable player). To integrate the transcoding of formats and then have an easy method (within amarok) to dump them to a USB device would be handy. (This would mean that it did not matter what format your stored music was in, as amarok would always convert the files to that supported by your portable player)

A couple of questions also.....

Any idea how I can change the genre of all the songs within an album, without having to edit each song individually ?

What engine offers the best sound quality - is there any difference ?

Well done to all those involved in this project

Thanks

I like both of your ideas.
About the second, It could be both a compile time option witch converters the compiler wants to support (flac, lame, ogg). Or you could make it a config option, where the user can later enter the file path to the executable, and maybe some options. And there could be some presets for the opttion, so user could chose easy between 128kbit and f.eks --alt-preset standard in lame without knowing the command options. Offcourse with sane default so it just works for those who dont want to edit anything (that would be --alt-preset standard:P )
It could be integrated in the new Mass storage section and the Files path.

Post edited by: mortiferus, at: 2005/01/13 16:42

I think adding service menu\'s like Konqueror does would make sense. Then you could just install a desktop file and add features like transcoding.

Blimey the media device section is on a roll, I\'ve got 3 ideas for coding into my updated portable media support in one day.

You could prompt the first time a device is used for config - ie. what file type to send to the device (which is picked from a list the device reports it supports). This could be stored in a sqlite config for the device. \"Don\'t ask again\" springs to mind as well.

:laugh:

Also consider storing the converted files that are sent to the USB device in a user directory somewhere. This will mean that the user will not have to convert them again when he/she wants to copy them to the portable player at a later date. Obviously this should be optional. Maybe also mark the songs downloaded(to a player)/stored in different format to the original in some way.

On my original 1st point, my wife is still keen to be able to select the music she wants to play from viewing the album covers. For her, (not being highly computer literate) is easiest way to play the stuff she likes.

Maybe add CD ripping ? I use Grip for this currently.

Also consider storing the converted files that are sent to the USB device in a user directory somewhere. This will mean that the user will not have to convert them again when he/she wants to copy them to the portable player at a later date. Obviously this should be optional. Maybe also mark the songs downloaded(to a player)/stored in different format to the original in some way.

On my original 1st point, my wife is still keen to be able to select the music she wants to play from viewing the album covers. For her, (not being highly computer literate) is easiest way to play the stuff she likes.

Maybe add CD ripping ? I use Grip for this currently.

Have you ever tried the audiocd kioslave with cdparanoia support??
It\'s great.

Cheers