Hi!

I've been foobar200 user for at least five years. Since then, I've started using Linux. At the moment i'm still running foobar2000 under wine, (because Linux has no good audio players). There are few requirements that I have.

Now I read that Amarok 2.4 will have these features, I can finally consider of getting rid of fb2k and go native.

1)
My fb2k setup generates the first three tags automatically and the rating is something that's set manually:
<FIRST_PLAYED> : 2011-01-13 13:09:00
<LAST_PLAYED> : 2011-01-13 13:09:00
<PLAY_COUNTER> : 1
<RATING> : 3

Amarok seems to have these tags:
<FMPS_PLAYCOUNT> : 1
<FMPS_RATING_AMAROK_SCORE> : 0.015
<FMPS_RATING> : 0.6

Also the playcount-module in fb2k has a slider to set how much of the song needs to be played before it get's stat update, I have set it to 50% (sometimes 20%). This would be a great addition for amarok too.



2) Amarok skips all mp3 files. VLC and others do play them so codecs are present. ogg's play well though.

3) Custom columns on the playlist.

4) How does amarok handle mods or other exotic formats?


I tried to copy my old tags into amaroks format. But it fails. Amarok overwrites the changes. for example: Setting <FMPS_PLAYCOUNT> to 35 and then playing that song in amarok end <FMPS_PLAYCOUNT> being 1!

I've not tried the embedded tags myself, but have you ensured you order a collection rescan after altering the tags? (You may need a full rescan to be sure.) Amarok simply writes the value from its database to the playcount tag, and if you haven't updated the collection it won't have changed the values in the database.


On mp3 files - Amarok does not necessarily use the same codecs as VLC/other players. You generally need an ffmpeg plugin for your backend for it to work. You can find out what backend you're using in Settings > Configure Amarok > Playback > Configure Phonon > Backend. This is likely Xine, but may be GStreamer. If you're on Kubuntu or Ubuntu using Xine, the package required is libxine1-ffmpeg. Instructions for other distros can usually be found on the wiki.


You can adjust the playlist layout to your heart's content under Playlist > Playlist Layouts.


Amarok will play anything its backend supports, either natively or with plugins. You'll have to Google around to work out what Xine supports, but you can switch to the VLC backend (Ubuntu package phonon-backend-vlc), which will play anything VLC does - in practice, pretty much anything (VLC is listed on the Wikipedia page for mods).

Alright. I installed phonon-backend-vlc, that made mp3s to work. Thanks.

But the other issues remain unchanged. Full rescan does nothing.
And I didn't mean just the layout, but I have custom tags. Like: Sting, Steward Copeland and The Police all have a <band> -tag, in this case it's "The Police". this <band> is not the only tag, but it's easy to explain and understand.

re: "full rescan does nothing" - are you running Amarok 2.4.0?

no, it's 2.3.90
I got it by following this: http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Download:Kubuntu

I had that problem as well, it is fixed in later versions.

try 2.4.0 http://www.kubuntu.org/news/amarok-24

a bit off topic:
Usually I get packages from the repo. 2.4 isn't there. Will it be. I really don't know how the software-cycle works in linux. And I don't want to compile unless absolutely necessary. Like: will I break software if I install from ie. .deb and the software center says that "you have different version, so I'll upgrade that". or Does it see that it's latest version and ignore it.

2.4.0 is available in ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports.

Damn this is active forum

Now, I've added ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports and thus, I have 2.4.0 and it effectively removes the "full rescan does nothing" -problem, which is good.

.mod's work too. nice!

so what does "Tools > Update Collection" do?

"so what does "Tools > Update Collection" do" - it initiates a check to see if there anything new in your collection (obviously not needed if the "watch collection" option is checked). This is not a full rescan of the collections.

Update Collection only scans directories with a modification time later than the last scan, so it only looks at things that may have been changed and updates the database. Full rescan scans everything and replaces old results.

DeusIX wrote:... I have custom tags. Like: Sting, Steward Copeland and The Police all have a <band> -tag, in this case it's "The Police". this <band> is not the only tag, but it's easy to explain and understand.

While Amarok doesn't have custom tags, it does have Labels, which I think might satisfy your needs. We even have an applet which will suggest labels, based on Last.fm tags. Or you can access from the context (right-click) menu, Edit Track Details: Labels tab.

hmm... yes labels can do the same thing however this raises two issues
1) They're not stored in the file, thus moving usb-hdd to other machine would mean to lose labels.
2) If the custom tags are not visible, then there is no way to make clean tags. as some MySpace artists tend to flood 50 custom tags promoting the same website. I find this annoying and delete these.

My music collection is quite large and I've spent a lot of time making it. Ripping all of my CD's and manually tagging every damn thing from producers to lyricist and performers... I could live without these, but I would like to access these somehow.


The <Play Count> tag only updates when the song is at end. I tend to skip some songs because they have loong-fade or a live performance with audience woo'ing for 2 min. With the current system, these won't ever get a <Play Count> update. [also consider this for the Score -thing. If I play 90% of the song shouldn't it be 90% of the score. I'n not sure how that algorithm works, but just an idea.]

Is it possible to have <First Played> & <Last Played> also updated into the file? This would greatly improbe the portability of media through Amarok and is a actually quite critical to me.