Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

[devnulljp]

Amarok 2.3.0 is driving me nuts trying to get my collection in there.
I have a TB or so of media spread over my internal HDD and two external USB drives.
First off I ran into the crashing while updating / .m3u bug: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227599
Deleted all my playlists and that seemed to fix it.
But I still can't get it to pull in my collection properly.
I've rescanned and all it shows me is some of the files on one drive. It says there's a bunch of media in my local collection, but doesn't show any of them, and says there's 0 tracks on two of my drives.
I've cleared ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/collection* , cleared ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle/*, deleted everything in ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/playlists/
Tried using the internal database, mysql, confirmed mysql accessibility, truncated all the mysql tables and started again...
Still borked.
Any ideas?

EDIT: OK, I think I've just figured it out -- it's dumping 75% of my stuff into "Unknown" so it's not reading the tags properly? The last version did just fine, and other programs see the tags OK too. What's different in 2.3.0? Anyone else having the same issue? Mix of mp3, ogg, flac. Mostly tagged just fine. Kind of annoying and it's going to be a lot of work to redo all the tags for a TB of stuff

EDIT2: Beginning to really hate Amarok. It will not remember the stuff on my external drives. It shows local collection 64000 files, most of which are Unknown. Ext drive 1: 0 files. Ext Drive 2: 0 files.
All this, and last night it was showing local collection 64000 files, most of which are Unknown. Ext drive 1: 42000 files. Ext Drive 2: 22000 files.

[jglen490]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

I really am unhappy with Amarok also. Maybe I'm just ignorant about how to play streaming music from a web radio site, such as sky.fm. It seems to gain time, but nothing plays. It works well in smplayer/mplayer, so it shouldn't be a codec issue.

The fine folks at kde.org community forums are absolutely no help. Does anybody know how to make this work?

[Snowhog]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

I'm personally begining to believe that Amarok 2 only works for the developers. I tried Amarok 2 after I installed Lucid 10.04. It still had issues with Audio CDs. I'm not going to use it. Version 1.4 was so much better. Amarok 2 is a regression more than an improvement. Looks over function are never an improvement on a product. :P

[devnulljp]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

I'm personally begining to believe that Amarok 2 only works for the developers. I tried Amarok 2 after I installed Lucid 10.04. It still had issues with Audio CDs. I'm not going to use it. Version 1.4 was so much better. Amarok 2 is a regression more than an improvement. Looks over function are never an improvement on a product. :P

Agreed! I was beginning to think it was just me.

[jglen490]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

I have removed it and purged it from my system. Never again.

[Snowhog]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

I'm still hoping, that one day, the developers will get it working the way it should - audio CDs, mp3s, streaming audio, etc. - as they tout it is supposed to do. I do like what it (was) shaping up to.

[jglen490]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

I understand that, but what's so cool about Linux - if there's one way to do something there are probably a hundred other ways some of which might even be better!! Life, and Linux, move on

[devnulljp]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

Every time I start up Amarok, it's forgotten all but a tiny fraction of my collection and I have to do a full rescan to get i back in. And even then, it only works sometimes. Most often it segfaults. If it makes it through the collection 1/2 the time it just dumps everything into "Unknown".
I tried to install 2.3.1 (well, 2.3.0.9beta) but I couldn't get it to compile.
I've been using banshee instead but it's kinda limited too.
Amarok 1.4 was the best so far. 2 has promise, but right now it's just not working.

So, what alternatives are worth looking at?
I've tried Banshee, xmms, and minirok.
Anything else that handles large music collections?

[ssri]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

It is asinine that amarok 2.3 utterly fails at something so basic (handling collections on external drives) that 1.4 handled with ease. This is not some whizbang feature, but something that is a neccesity for any music manager. All I have amarok 2.3 do nowadays is handle the local collection on my laptop. Even then, banshee is faster and less frustrating to use. I started fresh with another distro and loaded kde 4.4.x on it. I did not want to install mono and all of their dependancies because I did not feel that I just want to install all of the gnome and mono dependancies to run just one program, not because mono is teh evilz. I can tell you one thing though, using banshee throughout kubuntu jaunty was mostly a pleasant experience, especially when compared to amarok 2.3. I've been using 2.3 ever since it came out and I am baffled by some of their design choices, especially when it comes to generating dynamic playlists. I sloughed through it, but it was a pain compared to any other music managers out there. Yet, I still use it since there is not too many choices when it comes to full-fledged qt4 music managers. I have yet to find any music manager that is as nimble and extensible for handling large collections as mediamonkey though (so much so that I bought a license); it is the one of the main reasons why my windows7 partition is still around.

ssri

[AngelOfDeath]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

Hi there..i had nothing but problems with Amarok 2..So i compiled Amarok 1.4.10 using this script i found on line.. Its great it even fetches album covers...Hope that helps..

here is the script :

#!/bin/sh

echo '************************************************* *******************************************'
echo '*******This script will install amarok 1.4.10 with some recent patches in Ubuntu 10.04**********'
echo '************************************************* *******************************************'

sleep 3

echo
echo '*******************Installing dependencies*******************'
sleep 2
echo "Installing dependencies"
sudo apt-get install -q ruby-dev libtag1-dev qt4-dev-tools qt3-dev-tools kdelibs4-dev x-dev libxine-dev libgtk2-ruby libxine1-all-plugins

sleep 3

sudo apt-get install -q libdbus-qt-1-dev libsqlite3-dev libtunepimp-dev libmysqlclient15-dev libpq-dev libvisual-0.4-dev libsdl1.2-dev libifp-dev libusb-dev libnjb-dev x11proto-core-dev automake libtool libxine1 libxine1-ffmpeg build-essential

sleep 3

sudo apt-get install ruby-dev libtag1-dev qt4-dev-tools qt3-dev-tools kdelibs4-dev x-dev libxine1

sleep 3

echo
echo '*******************Installing iPod Support dependencies*******************'
sudo apt-get install libgpod-common libgpod4 libgpod-dev gtkpod
cd ~/Downloads
echo '*******************Dependencies installed!*******************'
sleep 2

echo
echo '*******************Fetching and applying patches*******************'
sleep 2
wget http://download.kde.org/stable/amaro...1.4.10.tar.bz2
tar -xvf amarok-1.4.10.tar.bz2
cd amarok-1.4.10

sleep 5

wget http://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=32838 -O amarok-1.4.10-gcc44.patch
patch -p1 < amarok-1.4.10-gcc44.patch

sleep 3

wget http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/amarok...hment-0001.dll -O covermanager-fix.patch
patch -p1 < covermanager-fix.patch

sleep 3

wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/348859...a_lookup.patch -O wikipedia-lookup.patch
patch -p1 < wikipedia-lookup.patch

sleep 3

sed 's/return " (band)";/return "";/g' amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp > amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp.tmp
sed 's/return " (Band)";/return "";/g' amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp.tmp > amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp

sed 's/return " (album)";/return "";/g' amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp > amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp.tmp
mv amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp.tmp amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp

sed 's/return " (song)";/return "";/g' amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp > amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp.tmp
mv amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp.tmp amarok/src/contextbrowser.cpp
echo '*******************Patching DONE!*******************'
sleep 5

echo
echo '*******************Configuring..***************** **'
sleep 2
./configure --without-arts
echo '*******************Configuring DONE!*******************'

sleep 5

echo
echo '*******************Building..*******************'
sleep 2
make
echo '*******************Building DONE!*******************'

sleep 5

echo
echo '*******************Installing..****************** *'
sleep 2
sudo make install
echo '*******************Installing DONE!*******************'

sleep 5

echo
echo '*******************Cleaning up..*******************'
rm -r ~/Downloads/amarok*

sleep 2

echo
echo '*******************Everything done!******************

[devnulljp]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

You can just add it from the repositories if you want 1.4.

sudo apt-get autoremove amarok*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bogdanb/amarok14
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install amarok14

[AngelOfDeath]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

Sweet thats faster then..Is cover fetching fix now...The reason i never did it that way couse the cover fetching didnt work....Compiling it i got cover fetching to work..

[devnulljp]

Re: Amarok 2.3.0: Collection problems

No idea. I gave up on amarok completely and I'm just using minirok now. No frills, but it plays music and doesn't crash which is the most important things right?