Hi everybody,

I am currently using KDE SC 4.5 with phonon-xine as my sound backend. For an installation in a Pub/Disco I need a soundsystem that is capable of crossfading two musictitles. I use Amarok 2.3.1 for playing music. The people in the amarok-forum said that amarok would be capable of crossfading but phonon and its backends are not. Is this true? If yes, is there a change on the way? I really like kde and especially amarok and would not want to loose either of them ...

Thanks for your answers

Harvey

No answers? Is there a special phonon-related forum?

Harvey

I would recommend asking on the phonon-backends@kde.org mailing list.

bcooksley wrote:I would recommend asking on the phonon-backends@kde.org mailing list.

Thank for your rep ,bcooksley

Yes, of course thanks for the answer.

And just to get you to the current state:
I asked on the mailing list and got _no_ answer. Seems this is a problem that everybody knows about, but appearantly noone can (or wants to) do anything about it.


Harvey

Harvey wrote:Yes, of course thanks for the answer.

And just to get you to the current state:
I asked on the mailing list and got _no_ answer. Seems this is a problem that everybody knows about, but appearantly noone can (or wants to) do anything about it.


Harvey

Hi Harley,

I've posted in the Amarok Forum "maybe a solution for crossfading" and the user "Mamarok"takes this item to this forum. Why, I don't understand exactly.
The link is:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=90286

I had thought that anyone would be interested in. But I failed.
Back to the post.
In that post I understand that the user "dwelch" had a solution for crossfading with phonon. But why do the amarok programmers do not go this step forward in direction crossfading. No one declares it.

But I don't working as a programmer and I can't create new code for amarok.
So what can I do or you do. I wait for a long time and I see that no one of the programmes takes part in the diskussion and writes something for me to understand this. Maybe thats part of human ego??

Yours mafal

mafal,

I have posted to your original thread. If the guy from stackoverflow is right, this might be the answer we are waiting for. I had a small peek at the code and understand this as follows:
Setting the transitionTime of a MediaObject for phonon to a negative number starts the transition effect before the other media object is unloaded which results in crossfading two MediaOjects.

If this would be feasable, than it would be as easy as: fade one song out and start to fade another song in before the first song ends. I wouldbe interested in seeing which backend he uses...

Harvey

He likely uses either GStreamer or Xine, as the transition effect isn't implemented in VLC yet.

bcooksley wrote:He likely uses either GStreamer or Xine, as the transition effect isn't implemented in VLC yet.

But the real question is: Do amarok programmers know about that? I fear not as in the amarok forum they keep on blaming phonon and its backends for non-existent crossfading... And the original thread was even moved out of the amarok forum.

Something is definitely wrong here.

Harvey

Crossfading isn't supported by any backend. Fade Out is supported by Xine, and may be supported by GStreamer. In this case, it appears that one of the backends supports emulating cross fading with a negative fadeout.

bcooksley wrote:Crossfading isn't supported by any backend. Fade Out is supported by Xine, and may be supported by GStreamer. In this case, it appears that one of the backends supports emulating cross fading with a negative fadeout.

Thanks for the clarification. But for me as a user this is a rather academic discussion...

I want my media player to smoothly change between two songs. How this is technically done is not my concern

And concerning the backend: I am perfectly willing to change my backend if it is unable to do that and another one is. This may be some kind of 'survival of the fittest' and lead to a smaller but better number of backends then.

Harvey

This is ridiculous. 2010's almost over and we're stuck with a media player that can not even (insert the f word here) crossfade.

Crossfading should be on top of the Amarok's dev team to do list. The project has huge backing so I really don't get it how something essential like that isn't solved yet. Context view is the least important part when listening to music yet it seems to be the focus of everyone's attention.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Amarok. I'm just not recommending it to anyone anymore, because the first complaint/mocking I get in return is exactly this - non-existing crossfading. It worked a decade ago for christ's sake.

I'd hardly call cross-fading essential, any more than an ice sculpture in my living room.

The context view is Amarok's entire purpose for being: Amarok's goal is to make it easier to get information about the music you're listening to and to easily discover similar music that you might like. It's right there in the motto: "Rediscover your music". It's no wonder that's what's getting all the attention.

@Madman

Then Amarok is music player or musicbook?

Because good play music in Amarok is the last amarok-devs cares.

1. Cross-fading is unnecessary
2. Audio CDs is "necessary evil to support".
http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/1200-Last-Week-in-Amarok.html#c8007

Skye wrote:Crossfading should be on top of the Amarok's dev team to do list. The project has huge backing so I really don't get it how something essential like that isn't solved yet. Context view is the least important part when listening to music yet it seems to be the focus of everyone's attention.

Says who? You?

I do not need crossfading at all. In fact, I *hate* it. It was the first thing I disabled a while ago when it was working (I didn't even notice it was broken...).

So the thing is: should they code the functionallity because you want it in there or they code whatever they want to?

I guess the answer is pretty obvious

Regards