Amarok Headquarters reports yet again another release of the marvelous Amarok 1.4 'Fast Forward' series.
Just like its predecessor, Amarok 1.4.8  fixes a fairly large amount of bugs, and therefore increases stability of Amarok's stable branch of development. Among the major improvements is the resolution of an issue that could, under some circumstances, cause a complete lockup during dynamic playback. Last.fm metadata fetching now also works with xine 1.1.8 and we made sure you can now also use your brand new iPods with your favourite music player.





And now the team can get back to work on Amarok 2, getting their hands dirty to bring Amarok 2 to you as soon as humanly possible! :)

Changes

• Optimize some database queries with the MySQL backend. Patch by Alf Eaton
• Don't show the device plugin dialog when a new device is plugged in. Apparently it's not obvious that you have to hit OK after selecting "Do not handle" if you don't want it handled, so disabling it prevents it from being shown repeatedly.
• Better support for iPhone/iPod Touch mounted via fuse/sshfs (libgpod 0.6.0 or newer required).
• Only re-render the context view when visible if changing ratings, scores or labels for songs.

Bugfixes

• Last.fm metadata would not update with xine 1.1.8. (BR 150429)
• Amarok would forget podcast channel and episode settings when using the PostgreSQL backend.
• When adding file types with the Generic Media Device sometimes the extensions would be prepended with & and would not save. (BR 151806)
• For improved compatibility with newer iPods, convert file extensions to lower case during transfer.
• Replace slashes in artist name with spaces when querying Wikipedia e.g. AC/DC, To/Die/For. (BR 150001)
• Always rebuild the dynamic mode cache when in Suggested songs mode, so that we don't land up with stale suggestions. Patch by Jer Johnson
• Sort albums made in the same year alphabetically in 'ascending order'. (BR 149408)
• Statistics tool shouldn't show samplers in 'favorite albums'.
• Duplicate songs were not allowed in playlist when adding from the collection browser. (BR 149643)
• Make sure the localUrl of a PodcastEpisode is valid after a failed download. (BR 147351)
• Fix off-by-one error causing Smart Playlists to not load tracks with a rating >= 4.5. (BR 148916)
• Don't enable "Configure Podcasts" at the top-level Podcasts folder if there is nothing beneath it. (BR 146504)
• Generic Media Device could copy some non-ASCII filenames to turn to gibberish. Thanks to David Smith
• Fixed possible GUI freeze when Amarok was showing the dialog for installing mp3 support. Patch by Sascha Sommer
• Amarok could needlessly reinitialize connections to MySQL databases after a configuration change. Combined with a bug in MySQL libraries, this could lead to a crash.
• Pressing Previous Track in a Dynamic Playlist could cause undefined behavior in certain edge conditions. Now it always plays the current track. (BR 148317)
• Immediately after loading a dynamic playlist, you couldn't drag a track to the top of the playlist. (BR 149263)
• Fix transferring files with UTF8 names to MTP devices. Thanks to Kevin Becker
• Display warning that iPod sysinfo could not be written in the case of incorrect file permissions. Patch by Christian Ober-Blöbaum
• Fix Czech character conversion to ASCII for Generic Media Device. Patch by Matěj Laitl