Thursday, December 6. 2007
Amarok 2: now with 100% more audio playing on Windows
Success!
After a couple of weeks of work, Amarok 2 was starting to come together on windows. However, there was still one problem: a media player without sound is about as useful as ... well, I can't think of anything sufficiently useless to compare it to, but it's pretty useless.
Not content to wait for Qt 4.4 "sometime next year", I decided it was time to give it a go. A couple of days later, here we are:
Amarok playing audio! Amarok is officially a media player (and not just a media browser) for Windows.
For those interested in the technical details, the backend is a plugin for KDE 4's Phonon media system (which means when Qt 4.4 is released, it should be a drop in replacement). It's using DirectShow for playback, which means support for mp3 and wma on a clean Windows install, and pretty much every other format Amarok on Linux supports if you have the correct codecs installed (basically, if it plays for you in WMP, it should play in Amarok). ffdshow is helpful here.
The bad news for all those drooling over the prospect of this is that Amarok 2 is still pre-alpha software, and there's a lot more work to do to get it ready for release on any platform, let alone Windows. So for now, unless you're comfortable with a compiler and a debugger, Amarok is still a few months away. Until then, get your fix with screenshots and progress here. World domination will have to wait ... but it will happen!
However, if you do have a bit of a coding bent (or just want to see where things are at), check out the wiki. It has details of how to get Amarok compiling and what needs to be done to get it to the stage where you never need touch iTunes, Winamp or WMP again.
After a couple of weeks of work, Amarok 2 was starting to come together on windows. However, there was still one problem: a media player without sound is about as useful as ... well, I can't think of anything sufficiently useless to compare it to, but it's pretty useless.
Not content to wait for Qt 4.4 "sometime next year", I decided it was time to give it a go. A couple of days later, here we are:
Amarok playing audio! Amarok is officially a media player (and not just a media browser) for Windows.
For those interested in the technical details, the backend is a plugin for KDE 4's Phonon media system (which means when Qt 4.4 is released, it should be a drop in replacement). It's using DirectShow for playback, which means support for mp3 and wma on a clean Windows install, and pretty much every other format Amarok on Linux supports if you have the correct codecs installed (basically, if it plays for you in WMP, it should play in Amarok). ffdshow is helpful here.
The bad news for all those drooling over the prospect of this is that Amarok 2 is still pre-alpha software, and there's a lot more work to do to get it ready for release on any platform, let alone Windows. So for now, unless you're comfortable with a compiler and a debugger, Amarok is still a few months away. Until then, get your fix with screenshots and progress here. World domination will have to wait ... but it will happen!
However, if you do have a bit of a coding bent (or just want to see where things are at), check out the wiki. It has details of how to get Amarok compiling and what needs to be done to get it to the stage where you never need touch iTunes, Winamp or WMP again.
Amarok Links
Calendar
Quicksearch
Archives
Categories
Syndicate This Blog
Blog Administration
We Listen To...
Powered by
