If there's the possibility of using an existing Music Player, I'd like to throw Cantata in the ring http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Ca ... ent=147733.
It's Qt5, multiplatform and well maintained.

Writing a software from scratch is a huge effort and kind of useless since we already have at least 5-6 *good* media player.
And the same can be apply on writing a media player on top of libVLC.
Instead of asking media players devs to work closely with KDE
why don't apply this new mockup on amarok (since KF5 version should be out soon) that is already a KDE app?
Isn't it the KDE default media player?
And it will be the mockup by *default* instead of just adding another skin to a Qt media player.

gnastyle wrote:Writing a software from scratch is a huge effort and kind of useless since we already have at least 5-6 *good* media player.
And the same can be apply on writing a media player on top of libVLC.
Instead of asking media players devs to work closely with KDE
why don't apply this new mockup on amarok (since KF5 version should be out soon) that is already a KDE app?
Isn't it the KDE default media player?
And it will be the mockup by *default* instead of just adding another skin to a Qt media player.

About Amarok, I was one of the guy who ported it to Qt5/KF5. The community is quite dead so I won't count on this.

hirnsushi wrote:If there's the possibility of using an existing Music Player, I'd like to throw Cantata in the ring http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Ca ... ent=147733.
It's Qt5, multiplatform and well maintained.

I really love Cantata, but it doesn't support the iPods and other MP3 players, which is really important for the "basic" KDE music player, I think.

I removed my proposition of Yarock because it's not mature enough I think. It does to much things but not well.

Musique is very nice and I think we could do something nice with it. It can be customized, we could help to port it to Qt5 (it's Qt4 based).

As I have a huge collection (>20,000 artists), the tree view is really missing, but if we take it for Plasma, we can also contribute and propose the feature.

I would go for this I thing. I have to test it more, though...

About PMC: for now, it's not useable as a media player. If I'm working on my college report, I cannot quickly start it and put it in background. So I think PMC has other purposes.

Oh.. Musique doesn't allow multiple music sources (like /home/olivier/music AND /run/media/Harddisk/music) and doesn't seem to work with Ipod/MTP players....

Again: contribs? Or skip to the next idea?

ochurlaud wrote:

gnastyle wrote:Writing a software from scratch is a huge effort and kind of useless since we already have at least 5-6 *good* media player.
And the same can be apply on writing a media player on top of libVLC.
Instead of asking media players devs to work closely with KDE
why don't apply this new mockup on amarok (since KF5 version should be out soon) that is already a KDE app?
Isn't it the KDE default media player?
And it will be the mockup by *default* instead of just adding another skin to a Qt media player.

About Amarok, I was one of the guy who ported it to Qt5/KF5. The community is quite dead so I won't count on this.

We can always try to revive it

kde-lunarparks wrote:

ochurlaud wrote:

gnastyle wrote:Writing a software from scratch is a huge effort and kind of useless since we already have at least 5-6 *good* media player.
And the same can be apply on writing a media player on top of libVLC.
Instead of asking media players devs to work closely with KDE
why don't apply this new mockup on amarok (since KF5 version should be out soon) that is already a KDE app?
Isn't it the KDE default media player?
And it will be the mockup by *default* instead of just adding another skin to a Qt media player.

About Amarok, I was one of the guy who ported it to Qt5/KF5. The community is quite dead so I won't count on this.

We can always try to revive it

I tried for 2 or 3 months. The code is very hard to understand, and the guys who code it are not answering, so you spend your time debugging to understand where the loop holds, which signal calls what and when.... Just read what happen on the dev list. I won't do it in those conditions.

we exclude amarok in the past cause it has another focus (it will be a swiss kniffe and we search for an simple player for desktop and mobile)

Well if you're looking for a media player, I think bomi can do the case http://bomi-player.github.io/
It's written in Qt5 and the interface in QML so it won't be too hard to make a mockup on top of it or, better, develop togheter with the devs.
And the software is current under development.

Cantata may be a nice mpd frontend, but for me that also makes it a non viable option for being a good default music/media player for KDE. I think especially non-expert users would be confused.

I have too look at musique. The few points raised until now don't seem too much work.
Bomi looks like it is just a simple media player,so for it being a viable option it would need much more work. VLC at least has some library management functions, which are I think essential for this.

Just my 2 cents:

For me Ipod/MTP... support would not be important in a basic music player app. At least not syncing / managing / copying ... from desktop to device. To be able to play music directly from the device would be nice, but only file system support. No collection, stats, ...

With a dedicated app for syncing / managing external devices one could get a much better user experience too.

Actually I never understood why collection management is not a separated app all along...

Looking at the options on the table, the most viable seem to be
1) collection manager on top of libVLC
2) KDE theme/support for tomahawk/musique/bomi/....(btw bomi is a rebranding/rewrite of CMPlayer [1])

The most important distinction is the focus, tomahawk is nice, has an android port which we can build upon
but they seem to be focusing on hachet (their social network and ecosystem), bomi looks very basic (think dragon player, playground status)
musique seems niclye written but its direction and focus is unknown.
Building on libVLC allows us more control in targeting plasma mobile than theme/support for other players.

[1]https://github.com/xylosper/bomi

@Horrendus: i keep searching, i don't really get the music collection in VLC. I agree with your conclusion.

@fabianr: true, the iPod/MPT sync is not the most important but it still is. I don't agree that collection manager and playing shoul d be separated. I agree that's kind of the "iTunes paradigm" but to me it makes sense.

If we only wanted a file player, I would say "go for VLC" as it's the best around. But I don't think it's enough for our users.

ochurlaud wrote:@Horrendus: i keep searching, i don't really get the music collection in VLC. I agree with your conclusion.

In the menu of VLC go to "View - Playlist". Then the interface (if docked playlist is set) changes and you see the Playlist, Media Library, local Music ...
Not saying the media library is perfect, but it exists