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Amarok 2.4 "Slipstream" Released

January 15, 2011 - 16:17 — nightrose

It's been a busy end of year for the Amarok developers, as the seasons bring the chilling winds of winter for some and the searing suns of the summer to others. Most of the big development branches have been merged, and a lot of new features were implemented. A major version is always a big step forward and it is with pride that we are here to bring you the release of Amarok 2.4, codename: Slipstream.

This release brings significant performance, usability, and stability improvements: Most of the bugs involving the context pane have been squished, a completely rewritten collection scanner is presented (hint: it's the thing that reads your music files’ tags) -- Amarok now has the ability to write your statistics and covers directly to the audio files to keep the information across different devices and should detect compilations a lot better. At long last, we also have an option to hide the menu bar again.
Speaking of tags, there's a new feature to work along with the rewritten collection scanner: Integration with the MusicBrainz music library to update your songs with accurate information. Having a well organized collection is easier than ever, now that you can select what you want tagged and do it with two clicks. We unfortunately had to remove the Playdar collection again that we added in beta 1. We hope to be able to add it back again as soon as we made a few changes to it.

Other notable features that have been added in this release, include:

  • The ability to use iPod Touch 3G and possibly newer devices.
  • Transcoding: Now Amarok allows you to convert tracks from one file format to another when copying from the file browser to the local collection. We will expand this to media devices in future releases.
  • A new applet that fetches guitar and bass tab information for all your string instrument needs.
  • OPML export for Podcast subscriptions.
  • A map and calendar view for the upcoming events applet
  • Support for UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) collections, you can now listen to music from UPnP servers on the local network.

Along with many more features, improvements and innumerable bug fixes. As always, it's good to have a look at the complete Changelog since Amarok 2.3.2 below to make sure you're not missing anything of interest.






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Join us and rediscover your music!


Version 2.4.0 (beta 1 and final combined)

Features

  • New UPnP Collection detects and plays media on UPnP devices on the network.
  • New transcoding feature which converts one or more tracks with a chosen encoder when copying to the local collection.
  • Added option to use Wikipedia Mobile.
  • Added settings for writing statistics and album covers back to the file.
  • Leave focus in playlist search widget when using up/down to scroll through filtered results. Thanks to Thomas Karpiniec for the patch!
  • LyricsApplet: The lyrics in are now updated when they were changed in a different place, for example in the Tag Dialog.
  • Permit the use of iPod Touch 3G and possibly newer devices. Thanks to Aurélien Croc for the patch!
  • Match space-separated search terms in the playlist filter var individually. Thanks to Thomas Karpiniec for the patch!
  • Added new context applet for displaying guitar and bass tab information. Thanks to Rainer Sigle for the patch!
  • Added ability to set/update Album Artist.
  • Added map view and calendar in the upcoming events applet.
  • Added support for all Wikipedia languages. (BR 220617)
  • Added incremental search in the Wikipedia applet (press '/' or global search key when in focus).
  • Added "Favorite Venues" to the upcoming events applet.
  • Read MusicBrainz IDs of MP4 files during scanning.
  • Ability to hide and show the menu bar. Patch by Valentyn Pavliuchenko <valentyn.pavliuchenko@gmail.com>.
  • Size of the On-Screen-Display font is now configurable. (BR 195186)
  • Musicbrainz-based mass tagging UI by Sergey Ivanov.
  • New easy to use table-based UI for Ampache server configuration. (BR 200703)
  • OPML export for podcast subscriptions. (BR 126120)
  • New "Playlist Length" constraint for the APG, which allows you to specify the number of tracks in the playlist. What was the "Playlist Length " constraint is now called "Playlist Duration".
  • MPRIS2 support for controlling Amarok over D-Bus.
  • New "Playdar Collection" allows searching for and listening to music provided by a running local Playdar service.

Changes

  • New Splash Screen by Tomasz Dudzik <madsheytan@gmail.com>.
  • The "Playdar Collection" feature has been disabled until some technical issues are resolved.
  • Fixed some broken radio stream URLs.
  • Brought back collapsing animations of context applets.
  • Added a "Donors" tab to the About dialog for our generous Roktober 2010 donors who wish to be mentioned.
  • Tracks might contain lyrics in the HTML format, where there's no user-visible content in the HTML. Those lyrics are now regarded as "empty".
  • LyricsApplet: changed the layout of the "Do you really want to refetch lyrics" message.
  • Current track applet: added "show in media sources" actions for current track's artist, album, composer, genre, and year if available.
  • Current track applet: added action to open the tag dialog.
  • Improved appearance of current track applet when playback is stopped.
  • Better scrolling in the applet explorer.
  • The default moodbar style now uses system colors.
  • Added tray icon context-menu action to open the preferences dialog.
  • Show a progress bar while loading pages in the Wikipedia applet.
  • Added option to right-align "year" in the albums applet.
  • Improved alignment of tracks in the albums applet.
  • Scroll to the current album and make its tracks visible in the albums applet. (BR 187011)
  • Added ability to expand/collapse/drag disc items in the albums applet. (BR 249488)
  • Improved appearance of similar artist, upcoming events, and Wikipedia applets.
  • Improved presentation of suggested lyrics (currently only 3rd party scripts use).
  • Now using QToolTip for playlist tooltips.
  • Changed playlist delegate margins and inline editor formating.
  • Added "Added This Hour" filter preset to the collection brower widget.
  • Bumped KDE dependency to version 4.4., and Qt dependency to 4.6.
  • Print message when a file can't be copied to a media player. Patch by Sergey Ivanov <123kash@gmail.com>. (BR 203820)
  • Improved the usability of device items in Media Sources by adding tooltips.
  • Deleting items in the collection/file browser will move them to trash; pressing SHIFT while clicking the action will bypass trash.

Bugfixes

  • Fixed crash on copying tracks between collection. (BR 261364)
  • Fixed fetching of script data. BBC, Free Music Charts and others should work again. (BR 261839)
  • Actually show the Splash Screen by default, as it was meant to work.
  • Leave all pending files in case of error/conflict during tracks moving. (BR 257739)
  • Fixed crash when moving tracks between collections. (BR 253033)
  • Fixed issue with UMS Collection that made amarok to delete original track instead of newly copied one. (BR 238915)
  • Fixed issue with Audio CDs that do not provide CDDB information. Patch by Andriy Gapon <avg@icyb.net.ua>. (BR 257818)
  • Fixed issue with the Organize Files Dialog that prevented presets from being loaded when in advanced mode. Patch by Philipp Schmidt <philschmidt@gmx.net>. (BR 255325)
  • Fixed white text on light blue background in tabs applet. (BR 258234)
  • Fixed cover dialog crash pressing Ok when nothing is selected. (BR 258187)
  • Title labels incorrectly used the text color from the plasma theme. This caused trouble with the fixed plasma theme and light color schemes.
  • Fixed a data-loss bug where the user could lose changes he made to the current track's lyrics. (BR 207621)
  • Fixed covers of Ampache tracks not available through DBus.
  • Scanning stale and orphaned songs on iPod results in song duplication. (BR 235696)
  • Applets' settings dialogs were partly untranslatable. (BR 255971)
  • Fixed append&play action. Thanks Pieter van der Kloet for the patch. (BR 229706)
  • Don't ignore the "use relative path" checkbox in the playlist export dialog. (BR 250689)
  • Fixed applet explorer getting stuck. (BR 253058)
  • Fixed Wikipedia applet header layout issues. (BR 215171)
  • Fixed truncated heading in albums applet. (BR 231001)
  • Playlist sorting breadcrumb items have been untranslatable. Patch by Alexander Potashev <aspotashev@gmail.com>. (BR 189750)
  • Dynamic Playlist criteria were not being saved properly. (BR 243562)
  • Collection Browser should show Artist names for Compilation Albums. (BR 252790)
  • When Amarok starts and "Continue playing when Amarok is started" is selected, the Current Track applet showed songs of the artist instead of the current track info. Patch by Conrad Hübler. (BR 241641)
  • Fixed crash on Windows when exporting playlist to any file type. Patch by James Duncan <james.t.duncan@gmail.com>. (BR 249376)
  • If album keyword is empty, show "unknown album" in context window. (BR 205038)
  • Ampache would not connect to servers placed in a subdirectory.
  • Fixed an initialization bug which affected all context applets.
  • Fixed bug where users could drag applets around indiscriminately.
  • FLAC BPM tags could be read incorrectly. (BR 234166)
English

Comments

January 18, 2011 - 16:26 — Anonymous (not verified)

I also miss the previous

I also miss the previous moodbar default colour-scheme.
Using system colours is a nice add-on, but it reduces information. (At least with my Kubuntu default colors...)

January 17, 2011 - 20:28 — DS (not verified)

Again a release that fixed

Again a release that fixed hated bugs and brought cool features although I thought Amarok is already perfect!
But what I noticed is that in the collection browser it is not more possible to make things with albums that have no name, e.g. show it under Various Artists or give it an image. In the previous versions of Amarok it was possible. Is that a bug or a feature?

January 17, 2011 - 23:42 — mck182 (not verified)

Yes, exactly this actually

Yes, exactly this actually pretty messed up my collection as I have lots of long mixed recordings and they just don't have any album. Before, they were at least displayed under the Artist, now they are just thrown into one giant mess called Unknown album. I don't like that.

February 5, 2011 - 11:30 — valoriez

Messed up collection

If you right-click on those tracks, you should be able to specify that you do NOT want them to be displayed in Various Artists. Also, you might create a descriptive "album" name which will help you find it in searches. "Album" is just another tag.

There is no perfect system for organizing music, but we're open to suggestions as to how Amarok could do a better job.

January 31, 2011 - 18:34 — Pete (not verified)

See

See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259665 for a discussion, I hope too it gets changed.

January 17, 2011 - 21:03 — Ralph (not verified)

Unable to play Audio CDs

Amarok 2.4.0 detects Audio CDs but it is unable to play them.
(Phonon - Xine backend)
No problems with Amarok 2.3.2.

Honestly, I do not know what to think of all these bugs that appear with each new release of Amarok.

January 21, 2011 - 20:19 — Pingo (not verified)

I'm gonna tell you what the

I'm gonna tell you what the problem is, this player sucks :)

January 30, 2011 - 10:45 — Andrew (not verified)

I'll say the same as I said

I'll say the same as I said above, if you DON'T HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT (anything that would help it to be better) TO POST, DON'T POST ANYTHING... The purpose of a GPL license (open source code) is exactly this, to EVERYBODY HELP IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF A GOOD APPLICATION... So please, use it right, or else LINUX wouldn't be any better than WINDOWS (what would be a shame for all of us)...

PS: Before you can tell anything about something you should know at least how does it work (so, in this case, you should know how to program and how does AMAROK work)... What you're forgetting is that when a bug is fixed, it sometimes causes a new bug to appear... Like we all are humans, we all commit mistakes. I think this explains why does some bugs appears and why somethings were not corrected yet... Be patient and hold your horses because one day the problem would be solved... While we wait for the final solution, we can do alternative solutions to these problems like the one posted (CUE format is not supported)... In this case you can convert your file to any other format (MP3 ; OGG ; other) so that the AMAROK could read it...

Best Regards,

André M.

February 10, 2011 - 02:38 — Anonymous (not verified)

My problem was that when I

My problem was that when I upgrade from amarok amarok 2.3.2-r1 to 2.4.0
I had no more sound using phonon-xine is the only engine that supports
the equalizer in amarok, I gave many turns and finally found the solution.
Simply remove two configuration files of phonon at the home user:

$ rm -i ~/.config/kde.org/Phonon-Xine.xine.conf
$ rm -i ~/.config/kde.org/libphonon.conf

After that, amarok 2.4.0 worked perfectly with the phonon-xine engine and the equalizer in amarok.
Hopefully this will serve more than one who have problems after updating.

Regards
Néstor

February 10, 2011 - 02:44 — Anonymous (not verified)

amarok-2.4.0 without sound with pnonom-xine

My problem was that when I upgrade from amarok amarok 2.3.2-r1 to 2.4.0
I had no more sound using phonon-xine is the only engine that supports
the equalizer in amarok, I gave many turns and finally found the solution.
Simply remove two configuration files of phonon at the home user:

$ rm -i ~/.config/kde.org/Phonon-Xine.xine.conf
$ rm -i ~/.config/kde.org/libphonon.conf

After that, amarok 2.4.0 worked perfectly with the phonon-xine engine and the equalizer in amarok.
Hopefully this will serve more than one who have problems after updating.

Regards
Néstor

PD: this is in gentoo

January 17, 2011 - 23:46 — mck182 (not verified)

How about cue support?

All the new features and the cue files in collection still doesn't work. Two years old bug report (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187587). Pretty please?

January 18, 2011 - 08:20 — NSLW (not verified)

I would like to see .cue

I would like to see .cue support in Amarok

January 21, 2011 - 20:13 — Pingo (not verified)

These people are basically

These people are basically not interested at all to fix this(it is the only conclusion), the .cue support problem has been reported for a long time. It is simply ignored. I just recommend switching to a new player, there are many good linux players out there.
Check out deadbeef, very strong cuesheet support: http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

Cheers.

January 22, 2011 - 09:28 — markey

Pathetic.

We work on Amarok in our spare time. Whether a feature becomes implemented or not, depends on many factors.

None of them has anything to do with "not being interested". Get a life, dude.

January 23, 2011 - 05:23 — Anonymous (not verified)

Why do you think he has not a

Why do you think he has not a life?

January 30, 2011 - 10:34 — Andrew (not verified)

Please guys, stop

Please guys, we only try to help each other with LINUX... Therefore it's a GPL (Open Source) OS and not only a free OS... Please, if you don't have any important comment for the benefit of all the LINUX/AMAROK community, don't post anything... You're not calling any type of attention doing things like that... Focus your knowledge and your brain to something that really matters here, make this AWESOME MUSIC PLAYER better than it is (it is already better than any player I have ever used therefore this forum should only FOCUS on IT NOT ON OTHER PLAYERS, and this includes Windows Media Player, iTunes, Gnome MPLAYER, VLC)...

Please, cool down and try to hang loose, we're here TO HELP NOT TO KILL EACH OTHER, we're not irrational animals (and that is what makes the difference between us and a dog for example)...

Best Regards,

André M.

February 5, 2011 - 11:40 — Thierry (not verified)

Thanks for this version !

Thanks for this version !

louer une voiture vraiment pas cher

January 21, 2011 - 16:49 — Anonymous (not verified)

If you need cue support, I

If you need cue support, I don't know in Amarok, but in the svn build of Clementine (Amarok 1.4 fork), there is support for cue.

January 29, 2011 - 23:14 — Anonymous (not verified)

A completely functional cue

A completely functional cue support to Amarok would be pretty much appreciated.
Most of my audio files are big flac + their respective cue files... And I cannot see their tracks properly.

January 18, 2011 - 05:40 — Claudio (not verified)

Great job!

Thanks for this version. This is the best music player software.

February 11, 2011 - 15:00 — Anonymous (not verified)

Thanks too

Thanks for this version - i also think amarok is the best music player.

Our Musikkomm Team

January 18, 2011 - 18:17 — Anonymous (not verified)

Excellent

As usual, runs great on Slackware - no complaints. Thanks!

January 26, 2011 - 10:56 — Maarten Wisse (not verified)

Thanks!!

This version does it all for me. The new collection scanner solves the long standing bug with loosing composer tags in WMA, covers are added to all albums with the same name etc. And even my idiosyncratic album names (composer names in fact) work together with the wikipedia applet. Thank you all again for Amarok!!

January 30, 2011 - 10:25 — Anonymous (not verified)

Why does I have to download it from the ppa of Kubuntu Beta

Hello,

Why does I have to download it from the ppa of Kubuntu that has applications in Beta (Not Ready At All) stage? Is that because this version is still in BETA stage? Can you move it to the official ppa of Ubuntu to all of the users of it to benefit from it?

PS: I'm using the official repositories for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meercat) and Kubuntu 10.10 downloaded from the Official Main Server...

Thanks for your help,

André M.

January 31, 2011 - 18:30 — Anonymous (not verified)

Could be due to some

Could be due to some dependencies (Qt) which are not up to date in the official repositories or due to one Ubuntu philosophy which is: stability.
So try the Kubuntu backports papa for the new version or wait for the new Ubuntu release :)

January 31, 2011 - 17:36 — Cerapter (not verified)

Available in Lucid?

Great! But will Amarok 2.4 become available in (k)ubuntu 10.04 anytime soon?

February 7, 2011 - 16:06 — Catu (not verified)

Different artists same name of album

Apparently the thing with "Different artists same name of album" it's working now... Great job and thanks! :D

February 7, 2011 - 18:52 — dkwn (not verified)

Amarok 2.4 Crashed

Hi, I have this problem when I start amarok 2.4:
Communication problem with "amarok" , it probably crashed. Error message was: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown" : " "The name org.kde.amarok was not provided by any .service files" "
any idea?

February 13, 2011 - 17:53 — js (not verified)

New amarok version

Just wanted to post a big thank you message on your on going struggle to get this piece of software out and with new features.
I see people get frustrated with the various bugs etc (I ve lost some user data on my collection in past updates - dont know what went wrong), still I dont think cursing and posting crappy comments helps.

Thank you amarok team. Hope you are still having FUN developing our favourite music player :)

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