Hi,

First off, love Amarok. Great job guys and thanks.

However, the collection feature has been somewhat baffling to me and just doesn't seem to work correctly. And this latest glitch has me wondering if this is a bug or intended.

Let me explain how I organize my music. I keep higher resolution oog/flac copies of most of my CD's for listening to on the computer. I keep them under my OGG directory in subdirectories identified by artist and CD. I also have some older MP3's from the days when it was king, and I also create lower resolution MP3 for use on small MP3 devices so I can get more music on them. I keep em around so I don't have to do it all the time. Those are in the same level directory as the OGG organized the same way.... so I have 2 main directories under Music, OGG and MP3 (i.e. ../Music/Ogg, ../Music/Mp3). Sometimes there are identical names artists/cd/songs in each.

When I go though and add in the unique ones from OGG and MP3 to create a complete collection of my music, Amarok goes kind of nuts, and starts moving my OGG files under the MP3 directory. This is the behaviour I find extremely annoying. I do not want you messing my on disk collection. What it did is chose an arbitrary subdirectory under MP3 and started alphabetizing them under subdirectories A,B,C,D, etc... then it moved all the actual ogg files under these subdirectories. WHY??????

Sorry, but there is no reason whatsoever for you to be moving files around on my disk. At first I couldn't believe it, thinking it was just links, but even the command line couldn't find them where I left them. Now I'm in a state where I don't know what the heck to do as I'm afraid you'll end up losing them all forcing me to rip them all over again. Well over 100 CD's worth at least.

So if this is an intended behaviour, then put it on the list as a major drawback for me and very close to a show stopper for using amarok. If it's a bug, okay, but it seems way to deliberate for that. I like the look and features like rating system, lyrics, queueing and all that, but I'm not going to risk my collection on a programming error.

Well, you actually didn't understand the signification of "Organizing music", as it is used to actually move files into another folder structure, so if you didn't intend to move anything you should simply not have used that feature in the first place.

Scanning your collection is enough to be able to see the collection, eventually adding tags or comments to distinguish between the different file types.

Also, please state what Amarok version, KDE version and distribution you are talking about as there are several in circulation currently.

FWIW, in the future there will be support for multiple collections, but this feature is not available right now.

I appreciate the answer, and I may not understand what is intended.... not that I haven't tried to find decent documentation on what that might be, but be that as it may...

I'm using Amarok V2.1.1 in KDE 4.3 under Fedora 11.

So the "Collection" tab is really "Organize Music"? Where did it say that? When I clicked on the objects, I was given no indication that it was going to start moving my collection around. Why did it chose the third subdirectory in in the first main directory it found to hide all the A,B,C,D,etc... directories under, and then why did it further lose all the links that it used to have and bury them all under some musician that had nothing to do with any of it?

Sorry, I don't mean to be antagonistic, but all indications to me was that "Collection" meant "MY" collection, not go out and arbitrarily move everything around on my hard disk and hide my music from me. If that was the intent, then the tab should have been labeled "Auto-organize" or something that indicated you were taking over the placement of it.

And you couldn't do that with your own symbolic links some place that didn't touch my placement at all?

Anyway, since the collection feature seems to enable a lot of other things I like, and that feature is nothing like I want, then I guess I have to move on. I'd rather you not try to second guess my music collection organization.

In the future, you may want to make this feature user selectable. I still appreciate all the work you guys put into these products.

Sorry, but have to ask after looking... what feature are you talking about, Mamarok? I see no option at all in Amarok to turn on or off a feature for auto-organizing. The text on "Configure Collection" under the "Configure Amarok" window only says, and I quote, "These folders will be scanned for media to make up your collection:" and no where does it say it's going to rearrange them.

Is there something I can actually turn off to get the behaviour I want?

MarkR wrote:Hi,
When I go though and add in the unique ones from OGG and MP3 to create a complete collection of my music, Amarok goes kind of nuts, and starts moving my OGG files under the MP3 directory. This is the behaviour I find extremely annoying. I do not want you messing my on disk collection. What it did is chose an arbitrary subdirectory under MP3 and started alphabetizing them under subdirectories A,B,C,D, etc... then it moved all the actual ogg files under these subdirectories. WHY??????
...

What you describe there is what happens if you choose the "organize Files" option that shows up when you actually right click on the collection browser. If you just want to have Amarok scan the collection, then tell it where the files are located in the settings menu and let the scanner do the rest.

Currently Amarok will not tell you the difference between ogg or mp3 files unless you actually put that in a id3 tag. Also, Amarok is not going to physically move anything unless you tell it to do so.

If this is not what you are describing, you might have to be a little more precise and maybe list briefly what you did and what result you expect.

Sorry again, but I can't find an "organize files" option in this version of Amarok, again, Version 2.1.1 in KDE 4.3.

What I see. Main window, three panes, left pane has four tabs on it's side; Collection, Internet, Playlists, and Files, in descending order.

I click on the Collection tab, the collection window opens up. I think this is what you are saying to right-click on. When I right click on it, I get a popup menu that has:

New Folder
Move to Trash
Sort->Various options for files
View->Various options for files
Append to Playlist
Replace Playlist
Edit Track Details
Move to Collection -> Local Collection
Copy to Collection -> Local Collection

I don't see any "organize files" option though the Move to Local Connection and Copy to options seem strange and I'm not sure what those are supposed to do. I can't find any place else to right click and produce a popup related to collections.

Going into the collection window under Configure-Amarok, I don't get a right-click popup menu at all on that screen.

Something I missed? Is there another Collection Browser different from the one I described that I am opening?

And if RTFM is the answer here, please indicate to me where the manual is. When I click on the help button, I get "no file found", so it didn't make it into the Fedora distribution, but I'd be more than happy to download it somewhere else. I don't see one on the site, but I admit I haven't done an exhaustive search either.

Ok, let's start again. You wrote earlier:

When I go though and add in the unique ones from OGG and MP3 to create a complete collection of my music, Amarok goes kind of nuts, and starts moving my OGG files under the MP3 directory. This is the behaviour I find extremely annoying. I do not want you messing my on disk collection. What it did is chose an arbitrary subdirectory under MP3 and started alphabetizing them under subdirectories A,B,C,D, etc... then it moved all the actual ogg files under these subdirectories.

What did you do to make Amarok behave like this? This doesn't happen without you telling Amarok to actually move things. Please answer that question.

I installed it. As I've said, there is no option to turn it on or off. This is a brand new install of fedora 11, and I restarted the database from scratch. As far as I can tell, there is no way I can affect this behaviour, it just happens by default.

In case the problem sits in front of the computer, I would do the following:
Install amarok.
Build the collection.
Right click on "Local collection"
Click on "Manage files" (not sure about the correct entry, because using german locale atm.).
And let Amarok restructure my collection.

But I'm absolutely sure, YOU won't do that. Correct?

m0nk

MarkR wrote:I installed it. As I've said, there is no option to turn it on or off. This is a brand new install of fedora 11, and I restarted the database from scratch. As far as I can tell, there is no way I can affect this behaviour, it just happens by default.

Sorry, but this is simply impossible... if you indeed just let the package manager of your distribution install Amarok and choose the folder in the collection settings (Menu "Settings" -> "Configure Amarok" -> "Collection") to tell Amarok where your files are and just let it do the scanning, there is absolutely no way Amarok can move anything.
Looks like a PEBKAC problem to me...