I am a noob here, so please go kindly with me!

I seem to be fighting endlessly trying to manually set my music
tags using EasyTag, only to find out that starting Amarok changes/modifies
the music file tags with it's own rules?

I tried blowing away the collections* files in my ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok
directory, then changed the tags with EasyTag, then started up Amarok again
in thinking that perhaps old Amarok data was was overwriting my changes?

I seemed to prove (to myself) that the changes after Easytag was done by
Amarok and it is rather jarring to me - I do not want Amarok to do this on
it's own (automatically) - if this assumption is true?

What can I do to ensure that my music tags are not being changed by Amarok
unless I explicitly use Amarok's tag interface in order to do so - if this is what is
happening? I want to ensure that other applications on my shared music files
are able to use my (manually edited) tags since it seems that Amarok uses the
users local database which is not sharable with others - which is why I do not
want Amarok to make any changes automatically.

Please advise?

Thanks!
Dan

Sorry, I forgot to add:

Fedora 9
Amarok v1.4.10

Here are some other gripes:

1) Amarok crashes often:

    a) When it encounters a corrupt file
    b) When very busy and user quickly plays around with the interface doing multiple tasks
    c) When a Tag editor is manipulating tags and Amarok attempts to update/use it with its own data

2) There is no clear information as to:

    a) How to clear the database of old/outdated/incorrect information
    b) What exactly is the difference between: Update / Rescan Collection.
        Where is "Refresh" Collection so that the database builds new information
        based on external/manual tag changes?
    c) Tagging options:
        1) To control/limit/allow/deny how Amarok handles file tags
        2) No access to user-controlled rules on how tags are searched, how fields
            are being obtained and built.  It seems that Amarok depends on directory
            and file structures and completely ignores file tag information as being a
            viable source of data and blows it away?

3) Amarok truncates fields, esp. Artists & Albums. Is this a ID3 v1x vs v2x issue
    or is this a database field length issue?

I really like Amarok, but unfortunately is is driving me nuts when it comes to
tag/database management - I have no control over what Amarok decides to do
with my manual tag changes - it seems to wipe it out and clears/changes most fields
rendering my changes useless.

Please advise.

Thanks!
Dan

I have done some heavy investigation and it appears that
my problem is in regards to the fact that I am using Fedora
9, but more importantly, my music files are on a mounted
NTFS partition.

It appears that Amarok is not the problem (unless it attempts
to write tags to the file), but is a problem with any Tag Editor,
such as, EasyTag and Audio Tag Tool when attempting to work
with files via NTFS partitions.

What I am seeing is that the NTFS filesystem appears to be
inherently unstable when writing to the file; I get anything
from wiped out fields, Truncated strings, or many false positives
as reported by the Tag Editors.

The workaround for me was to move the files to an fsck partition,
and use the Tag Editor there to make the tag updates, and then
move the files back into the NTFS filesystem.

Amarok is happily reading the files and (automatically) updates the
database with new data.  There are cases, which I cannot understand
(yet) where some files will not be placed into the Artist/Album categories
and ends up in either "Various Artists" or "Unknown" at the top of the
Collections pane.

So in the long run, Amarok seems to do it's job very well at this point.

Dan