Some of your mp3s don't play with Amarok2 on Windows? Easy solution: Install this: http://www.free-codecs.com/DS_MP3_Sourc ... wnload.htm

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Explanation:

The Windows mpeg1 Splitter (quartz.dll) is buggy and will not play most mp3s (it mostly depends at which offset in your file your standard mp3 headers are located. Wrong location - no playback. It will also fail with apetags or any id3v2 album art embedded). This has gone mostly unnoticed though as not even Windows Media Player 7+ uses it (oh the irony). However, Amarok does not come with any file parsers or decoders and therefore resorts to the standard direct show chain, which will use the bugged parser and will not play most files. Reproduceable with Windows Media Player 6.4 or graphedit aswell. Solution: Install this: http://www.free-codecs.com/DS_MP3_Sourc ... wnload.htm

This is both file parser + mp3 decoder in one thing. Notice that by using this you cannot add additional direct show filters into the chain (e.g. you cannot use ffdshow for normalize or reverb effects). If you REALLY need to, instead of using the ds_mp3 source filter, you *could* use this: http://www.free-codecs.com/MP3_Parser_D ... wnload.htm

However take note that this second link leads to a rather buggy thing. It will only replace the malfunctioning windows mpeg parser, but not the decoder, therefore it will be possible to use additional direct show filters in the chain. However, it will a) randomly crash amarok and b) crash amarok 100% whenever the end of any given playlist is reached and you try to play another song.

This post has been edited for easier understanding of the situation. Below is the original post I made some month ago for archival purposes.







Original Message:

Note: This is not an Amarok Bug, but it has a huge impact on Amarok so I thought I post it here aswell. I originally sent this msg to the kde-windows mailing list.
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Trying out Amarok2 on Windows I encountered a SERIOUS issue: Not all mp3s will be played. At first seems random which are played and which not, but it eventually turned out that the problem is the mp3 header data, which differs in position from file to file. If it's too far into the file, the Windows Mpeg1-Splitter (quartz.dll) will bug out and no playback can be achieved. This is also the case when there are e.g. pictures in the id3v2 tag.

This results int MANY mp3s being unplayble on Windows.

You can reproduce this bug anytime either
-using graphedit (it willl claim it can't create a graph when the mpeg1-splitter doesn't like the headers)
-using Windows Media Player 6.4 (mplayer2) (it will error out claiming "unregistered class")

However, most Windows users aren't aware of this situation , because
-Winamp plays the files
-Windows Media Player 9+ plays the files

So if you don't want the Amarok guys get flooded by angry MY FILES WON'T PLAY posts on their forum, you better somehow implement something like this:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP3 ... Filter.htm

This direct show filter creates sort of a bridge between the mpeg1-splitter and the eventual decoder (this also results Amarok displaying file length when vbr was used for encoding properly).

Note: This problem is universal to kde-windows (as in e.g. the phonon example media player is affected aswell, and juk and dragonplayer should be too).

What the hell does WMP9 use to play MP3's if not DS9?

Yet another reason to consider phonon-vlc...

I'm currently trying out Amarok for the first time on Windows and I'm having this problem, too.  So far, it seems that I'm unable to listen to any of my mp3s except for one 31 second ringtone.

You should read the entire text

Install this: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP3 ... Filter.htm
Solves.

gmw wrote:You should read the entire text

Install this: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP3 ... Filter.htm
Solves.

I did read it, but I didn't click the link because from the way it was written I assumed that this is something the developer needed to implement.

Thanks, though!

I installed the parser and it has had no effect.  I still can't play most of my files.

How are you trying to load the mp3s? You need to have them in your collection or they won't play for the time being...

All of the mp3s are in my collection.  When I attempt to play them, nothing happens.  Eventually I get a small pop-up that tells me that my playlist is being stopped because it has encountered too many errors.

In kderoot/bin, is there a subfolder called phonon_backend which contains phonon_ds9.dll ?

gmw wrote:In kderoot/bin, is there a subfolder called phonon_backend which contains phonon_ds9.dll ?

Yes.

Hi,

I experienced the very same problem. I solved it by downloading and installing a codec pack (http://www.chip.de/downloads/XP-Codec-P ... 12789.html).
Afterwards Amarok was playing music without a problem.

Greets

Schroeder