Summer of Code: Call for Ideas

recently had a good look at a friends Acoustic Energy internet radio, based on a linux kernel,
which seems an excellent piece of kit. it has the capability to connect to windows media network shares,
and recieve a list of internet radio sites from the https://www.reciva.com/ web site which gives easy selection of thousands of streams

Richard

One feature I'd like to see is being able to keep songs from being included in Random Mix. For example I have some stand-up comedians that I don't want to pop in during Random Mix since that interrupts the music. Other things include live albums or secret tracks that have long blank spaces.

The other thing that would be cool is to be able to listen to music online with other Amarok users (or even Windows/Mac users). Like I could set up a playlist, and my friend could stream it at the same time, and maybe even throw his own songs into the list. Probably a lot of work, but its the one feature I think could give music players a social aspect. I think 3degrees (an old MSN Messenger add-on) did it, but I never got it to work, and the project has since been discontinued.

I know this is likely not possible, but since many people had suggested things that can be found in iTunes and Windows Media Player, I'll add in input from a gamer's perspective. More directly, an XBOX 360 gamer.

I would love to have the ability to stream my music (and video if possible) from my Linux machine to my XBOX 360. This will literally yank me off Windows for good.

Thanks,
deltatux

Hi,

Amarok is a very nice music player.
But there are some things which needs to be changed:

- Commercial. (nothing to do with the product itself of course)
I 'found' this product a year ago, I never heared of it..while I'm already using linux for almost 10 years. (and I was suprised about this product!)
Also when I show this product to other linux users, starters, they never saw this before.
This should be the default player with KDE installations..
Get in some sales persons :p :)

- Visualizations
Normal end-users like some nice 'candy' on their screen, they want to show of with their pc/installation.
And the product doesn't have special visualizations. I agree, the xmms plugins can be used, but it's not the same and they are still '3the party plugins'. They don't give the 'wauuuuuw' effect most of the time. (they 'eye' wants something)

- Streaming
Able to stream the music should be a big +, and I think a lot of users would like this.

- Write to cd
Something what my girlfriend would like to have, who likes Windows ..and isn't a real Linux lover.
The windows media player allows users to write music (mp3,etc) to normal cd's.
If this option would be available in Amarok, this would be very helpful for normal end-users and would make the Amarok product more 'complete'.

voila...
My small wish list :p

I've often wanted to be able to make a new playlist while one is currently playing - this seems to be outside of Amarok's current philosophy, but I think this should change. When I goto the 'playlist' window I should be able to make a new, custom playlist there (not a smart one) WITHOUT destroying the currently-playing section.

OSD: %user_defined_string1, %user_defined_string2, %user_defined_string3, ...
DCOP: void setUserString( int num_id, QString user_string);
and more specific OSD dcop amarok function.
ex. viewOSD(), hideOSD(), setOSDStringFormat(), setOSDPosition(),setOSDTimeOut(), ...

Thanks.

You probably do not accept proposals anymore, but I am too lazy to try to find if someone is already talking about it on the bugzilla... I hope someone will read these notes ^_^; Feel free to copy them to the bugzilla, if there is no open report already.

• Revert the default behaviour, when double-clicking on a song in the playlists, to append and queue, instead of append and play now, and permit to configure this behaviour. Also, in the right-click menu, in the playlists, "Load", "Append" (BTW, "Append to playlist", when we are already in a pane named "Playlists", is a problem... the entry should be named something like "Append to current playlist"), and "Queue", seems to have mostly the same behaviour, which is very bad. I understand the need to support multiple behaviours, but they must be better identifier. For example: "Replace current playlist and queue" (start playing when the current song ends), "Replace current playlist and play now", "Add to current playlist and play now", and "Add to current playlist queue"... (well, as said, there is a problem with using "playlist"...). The titles sure are longer, but you just cannot use imprecise and confusing titles.
• There must be options to configure the behaviour of switching to the next playlist entry, when the previous entry failed (e.g., an online radio which does not work/stopped working, or is overloaded), notably when the radio was started manually. It is highly annoying to see Amarok switch to other entries (which, depending on the playlist, might be lower quality streams, or completely different streams), and sometimes see it fails to start multiple radios in a row, and being flooded with error messages. I know I could deactivate repeat, but I also regularly use Amarok to play local files, and I don't want to have to change options each time. There should be an option like "Do not take into account the repeat option, and stop everything, if a playlist entry, which was started manually, fails to start playing, or fail at any other moment. You can then select yourself, what to play next". Well, there should probably be some short name (maybe something like "Stop playlist if manually-started entry fails"), but there must be the complete description of the option.
• The pop-above notice system, while quite good for one-time message, becomes completely unusable when there are multiple messages in a row. For example, when I try to load a radio, and it fails, and I try to load other radios, and they fail too. First and foremost, the most recent message must be shown in front of the others. Second, there should be some way to be able to read at least three to five messages at once... (the complete message for the most recent notice, and only the title, for the others...). Maybe try to show the title of older notices above (I mean, at the top, not in front) the most recent notice... The pop-above surely must not be too high/large, however.
• Some error messages are confusing. When a radio does not work (it is offline, or overloaded), it states, as the first possible reason: "No suitable input plugin. This often means that the url's protocol is not supported"... and only after this: "Network failures are other possibles causes". In most cases, I guess it should be possible to be more specific...
• You recently solved some timeout problems when loading radios (well, at least, I only seldom encounter problems with Amarok 1.4.5), but I still sometimes have problems where Amarok freezes completely for maybe thirty seconds. I don't have much details (it only happened a few times, and I don't quite remember the context), but it seems to happen more when the radio fails during playing (rather than when starting).
• I didn't try to find more about it, but I don't think there is a way to equalize/smooth the volume... amateur radios generally have awful volume equalization (well, I'm listening to anime radios, and in a number of cases, the original track sure has awful volume equalization to begin with...), and you often get like thirty seconds to one minute of blank, or some sudden high increase of volume, when you listen to these radios without an headphone, and with a normal volume, which is highly annoying and frustrating, notably when you listen to radios while doing some work. I have absolutely no idea of how to handle it (I mean, when to correct the volume), but maybe there should be a way to equalize/smooth the volume a bit... (of course, as an option, and maybe with a way to only activate it for online radios...).

Keep up the good work,

Cya.

We know that there's still no replacement for foobar2000 in linux.
foobar2000 is not only an audio player, it's a powerful audio tool.

What I would like to see in a linux player is:

1) Hability to convert losslessly FLAC to WAV, WAV to FLAC and FLAC to MP3.
2) Hability to read cuesheets, trim, merge WAVs or FLACs.
3) Hability to MASS tag with every tag out there in APE2 or IDV3.

How about porting Amarok to Windows and OSX so it can efficiently continue it's destiny of taking over the world. Would that Be worthy of Google SoC? I think so. Give itunes a run for it's money....

Some of you who might still have friends using windows, may have seen a new function of iTunes which allows other iTunes users on the same LAN to play each others music(this music comes as a stream, and isn't copyable easily, (apart from the record wave-output)). It's a pity that amarok didn't come op with this.

So my question is, are there guys with brains and knownledge to "break into" this iTunes LAN and add my collection to the iTunes listeners. (or just giving the amarok users the posibility to do this among each other.)

Let's assume that we build a large collection in months and hdd crashed. The content didn't lost because albums have been backuped (a long time before Amarok was born) ... but the user work - cd cover choosing, id tag correcting, author/album grouping, file names changes were lost and need to be redo.
It's possible to save logic links between covers, collection structure and MD5 hash from mp3 files (without id tags part) this would be first step. Another would be making transformations that would automate the process of rebuilding collection that were lost.

Features I would like to see in the next version:
1. Easy way to save a SHOUTcast stream to a Favorites menu (Currently have to do this by hand).
2. A record button that allows me to easily start/stop recording a SHOUTcast stream using streamripper (ala Streamtuner).
3. Some SHOUTcast stations have multiple addresses. It would be nice if amarok could go to the first working one on its own.

Here's a feature I would love to have: tell Amarok to only play songs which are shorter than N minutes. I have a wide variety of music, including some albums with 20 to 30-minute tracks, and for "party mode" (when company is over) it's generally better to keep the new songs coming at a regular interval (say 5 minutes at the most), like a jukebox at the bar.

One feature I'd add is full-blown music library management.

Right now, Amarok does a great job of creating a hierarchical library given a set of folders to search. But some users will want Amarok to help them manage the files themselves.

Adding a flexible set of tools for managing a music library to Amarok would be beneficial to users who are consolidating a library assembled from a variety of sources (an existing music library, files downloaded from legitimate internet sites, ripped CD's, etc).

Options might include copying music to a default collection folder, sorting it into an Artist/Album structure, and renaming files based on the tags.

Create a media server framework so that Amarok could serve music to renderers. Of course bias the first implementation to support the XBox 360.

-andre.

Official Amarok for Gnome fork?

(ducks)

Be able to import data from an itunes database. Possibly sync data between databases