aMDE

nospam@example.com (Mike Diehl) — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 22:29:09 -0400

For those who keep track of the mailing list you know there has been a lot of talk about video in amaroK. The idea has been tossed around before, and the nmm engine even does video, at least I think it still does. Anyway I spent some time thinking about the idea and some of the possible problems.

First would be that tagging of videos really doesn't exist. This is a big problem, without tags you lose most of the features that make amaroK what it is. If the media is not in the collection you are left with pretty much just a playlist, something easily implemented in existing video players. Currently to get media into the collection you need tags, this problem is well known to those who try to add wma's to there collection. So where does this leave us? Do we adjust the db to suit the needs of video, or should someone write plugins for taglib 1.4 to support video?

Second, where do we put the interface for accessing videos? Using the file browser would not be very good, and would be inconsistent with normal media handling in amaroK. Generally media is accessed with the collection browser or some other part that requires the collection, such as the context browser. This brings us back to problem one.

Another issue is bloat. Many have said keep it simple, but what is simple. Is it open a little window that shows the video and that's it? If this is what it means, I'm still at a loss to find any advantage to playing video in amaroK. There are plenty of minimalistic video players, one of which is by our very own (gone missing) mxcl, and it does the job nicely.

And if video support is added, does it stop there. Should we go so far as to integrate K3B for burning, there is already a wish item to add a K3B part into amaroK. And what about the bit torrent client, maybe it should be next. I don't think the idea of an amaroK Media Desktop Environment is that great, as too many features can confuse and scare away new users, and just hiding them makes for poor usability.

Maybe people can share there ideas and solutions as just throwing in a feature like this would be bad, and careful planning is needed to keep from ending up with an interface that's bloated and a pain to use.

amaroK, the do it yourself player

nospam@example.com (Mike Diehl) — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:59:33 -0400

One of the things I find interesting about amaroK is the amount of control and information that is available using DCOP. An often asked question is "How do I know the number of tracks in my collection?". Using DCOP we can find this out.

dcop amarok collection query "SELECT COUNT( url ) FROM tags;"

Maybe you would rather know how many albums.

dcop amarok collection query "SELECT COUNT( id ) FROM album;"

It could be that you just want the cached lyrics of the track you're listening to now. With DCOP this is as simple as

dcop amarok player lyrics

It doesn't stop there, I counted almost 80 DCOP calls in the current SVN of amaroK, with the newest being setLyricsByPath. This call combined with the script manager should allow script writers to choose there favorite site for downloading lyrics. We even have a DCOP call to add custom items into the playlist context menu for scripts that work on selected tracks only.

So the next time you wish you could have more control of amaroK from your multimedia keyboard, look into what DCOP has to offer. The handbook that shipped with your amaroK lists them all, or you can use kdcop if you would like a nice interface for trying them out.

Amarok Blog - madpenguin8

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amaroK, the do it yourself player