Amarok/Manual/Various/FAQ

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What is Amarok?

Amarok is a music player. More information can be found in a summary of its features and the screenshot gallery.

What are the differences between Amarok 2 and the previous versions?

Amarok 2 is a nearly complete code-rewrite so the codebase has little to do with Amarok 1.4. If you are missing a feature, please file a wish in [1]

Here you have a short list of some new features:

• Maybe the biggest new feature is the Service Framework, which integrates networked music sources directly into Amarok. This includes online music stores, media servers, Web music lockers, and more. Thanks to it you'll get easy access to music provided by Magnatune, Jamendo, Last.fm, MP3Tunes Locker, Ampache and many others. Expect more big (and small) names to join during the 2.x lifecycle.

• Another biggie is the Context View, occupying the central place of the Amarok's window, replacing the old Context Browser from the 1.x series. It displays contextual information about the music you play, like the album cover, track rating, labels, lyrics, artist information, related songs and artists, track mood and others. Thanks to the Plasma technology it uses, Context View can provide very rich content, like AJAX, video and animations, all in eye catching fashion.

• To accompany the Context View, we developed a new, space efficient playlist. In order to preserve the horizontal space it groups the track name, artist, album name and cover art together, and allows further grouping by album names. Plus you can rearrange to your heart's content!

• Another great gem is the video support. Watching your music videos inside Amarok feels great!

• We can't forget the Biased Playlists, which extends the old Dynamic Playlists. They allow you to define an automatically populated playlist, based on specific probability driven criteria called "biases".

There are many more great features like advanced scripting, dynamic collections, usability improvements, improved media devices handling, new podcast manager, support for more software platforms, and others.

Installation

Can I use Amarok without KDE?

Amarok requires parts of kde to be installed to run, but will run fine in gnome or other desktop environments. For Amarok to run, kdelibs and kdebase-runtime need to be installed.

For some features to work correctly, such as the on-screen display, your window manager must be configured to support the relevant freedesktop.org standards.

Why does Amarok use kdelibs?

We are committed to supporting Amarok on all platforms. We use KDElibs and Qt because they provide an excellent development environment. Aside from Linux and BSD, Amarok works on Windows and MacOS, and there are installers available, but unfortunately we don't have (yet) the resources to offer full support for those operating systems. Almost all of our developers use free operating systems, and those have priority for us. We do however welcome Windows and OS X developers willing to help, and improve Amarok on those platforms.

General usage

Where can I get support for Amarok?

There are several options. Often times problems you have with the initial install of Amarok are best answered by experts of your particular Unix or Linux distribution. You may seek help from fellow users and developers at the Amarok forum and the IRC channel at irc.freenode.net channel #amarok.

Note that the bugzilla is not a place to seek support. Please do enter a bug if you are serious about helping fix a bug in Amarok itself.

When I start Amarok, I see an empty playlist. How do I actually get tracks in there?

Use the Collection on the left side to navigate to the desired artist/album/track. Then drag the files into the Playlist part on the right. You can use the Dynamic Playlists or Automatic Playlist Generator to populate your playlist. Also, you can drag the files from any file manager, such as Dolphin.

How do I remove tracks from the Playlist?

Select the track(s) you want to remove, and press the Delete key. Or right-click the selection and choose Remove From Playlist.

How can I load a playlist?

Just drag and drop the playlist file into the Playlist, like you would do with any other file. It's that simple!

How can I save the current playlist?

Use the Save Playlist As button in the Playlist Toolbar.

Where's the equalizer?

The equalizer is only available if you are using the Xine backend of phonon, and you can find it in the Tools menu. You can get more infofmation about configuring Phonon backends in your distribution in the download page.

How do I turn on visualizations?

Visualizations are not implemented yet, but they will be very soon.

How do I play audio-CDs

When you insert an audio CD, it will be shown as a local collection.

How can I add podcasts?

Go to Podcast section in the left toolbar and then select Add Podcast... Add the podcast URL where indicated.

How can I use Amarok to stream to my own radio station?

If you want to stream directly to a icecast or shoutcast server the answer simply is: it is not supported. You could use IDJC for that.

Playback Questions

What media types does Amarok support?

Amarok does not play music by itself, but lets Phonon do that job, specifically the GStreamer or Xine backends of Phonon. Therefore, whatever files they can play, Amarok can play. To analyse file's tags, Amarok uses Taglib, which supports most file types that contain metadata.

What is Phonon? What are Phonon backends?

Phonon is the multimedia framework of KDE 4. You can find more information here.

Usually Xine backend works better than GStreamer one, although it is not always true. We also suggest you try the VLC backend, although still in development. You can find more details on installing backends in the download page.

Amarok won't play MP3's, what can I do?

Have a look at the MP3 information page.

I can't get any media to play in Amarok, why not?

You need to test the sound frameworks at the command line:

%xine-check

(The Package xine-ui contains xine-check)

The output from these commands should help you identify the problems you are having and how to fix them.

I have a second soundcard and I'm using ALSA. How do I make Amarok use it instead of the default?

Configure this in the phonon system settings module. Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Playback -> Configure Phonon

General questions

What are scripts?

They are little pieces of software that add some functions to Amarok. There are a lot of scripts, and you can find them in kde-apps.org or you can install them inside Amarok using the script manager.

You can find more details here.

Can I use Amarok 1.4 scripts in Amarok 2?

No. A new and powerful scripting API has been created, which provides huge improvementes but won't let you use your old scripts. The new scripting system is based on QtScript and will significantly reduce Amarok's dependencies, (a huge problem for non-technical and cross-platform users), and will greatly reduce the amount of external processes launched at runtime. Another advantage is that the new API will allow much deeper integration with Amarok than the old scripting system.

What are moodbars?

Moodbars show the mood of a song in the progress bar. For more info read here.

Can I play video files?

Amarok is mainly a music player so no video file management, collection support, DVD playback, subtitles, or any other sophisticated features are available. However, the video applet lets you play Youtube videoclips inside Amarok.

Is it Amarok, AmaroK or amaroK?

It is Amarok! The former spelling was amaroK, but it was changed due to its strange look.

How are track scores determined?

Amarok assigns a score (a number 0-100) to a song based on how many times you've listened to it and whether you skip the song without it finishing. Every time the song finishes playing, the score is changed.

Here you have an example script that can calculate scores:

  if( playcount <= 0 ) # not supposed to be less, but what the hell.
      newscore = ( prevscore + percentage ) / 2
  else
      newscore = ( ( prevscore * playcount ) + percentage ) / ( playcount + 1 )
  end

You can easily create your own script with your own algorithm. Look at the [[2]] for further information.

How do I manually change a track's score?

You may change the score manually in the Edit File Information dialog, available by right clicking on a track, and choosing the Statistics tab.

But I also want that stars system like in other players!!

Amarok, of course, supports an user-defined rating system, and you can rate your tracks with a single click using the Current track applet. You can also do this in the Edit file details dialog --> Statistics tab. If you have your stars displayed in your playlist layout, you can also edit there, with the slow double-click.

Can I drag and drop Plasma applets from the main window to the Desktop??

No, but there are many Plasmoids available for your Desktop, which will let you display information provided by Amarok as well as control Amarok.

Can I use removable media inside Amarok?

Amarok has a greatly improved support for the media devices based on Solid, the KDE hardware layer, that doesn't need a lot of configuration. You should be able to just plug in your device and access it within Amarok. Also, thanks to the Dynamic Collections, your media devices could become part of your music collection, and be searchable and accessible within the Collection Browser when it's connected.

You can transfer your songs from your local collection by right clicking --> Copy to collection --> Your device; and you can also do it in the other way: right click in a song --> Copy to collection --> Local Collection.

How can I save a stream?

First of all, load the stream into the playlist. There are several ways to do this: downloading the file, for example from shoutcast.com, and opening it with Amarok; using the menu "Playlist"-->"Add stream"; among others.

Once the stream is loaded, you can save it by clicking on "Save current playlist" which is under the Playlist, and giving it a meaningful name. The Stream will then be added to the "Saved playlists" view for later reference.

Can I use the old Amarok's collection in Amarok 2? Will my tags, score are ratings be lost?

A database importer is available. You will be able to keep your ratings and statistics just fine.

Where do I find the settings for amarok?

`kde4-config --localprefix`/share/apps/amarok

`kde4-config --localprefix`/share/config/amarokrc

Troubleshooting

How can I obtain a backtrace?

If Amarok has crashed and you want to report it, visit the Debugging HowTo. The bug report must be sent in http://bugs.kde.org verifying previously if it has already been reported.

Amarok just freezes! How can I help get this fixed?

You can obtain a backtrace of a frozen instance of Amarok using gdb like so:

$ gdb -p 'pidof amarok'

(gdb) thread apply full bt all

Then just post the backtrace to PasteBin, as described in the Debugging HowTo.

Amarok takes a lot of time to start

If this happens you have to check what scripts have you installed and what internet services are running, because some of them may slow down the startup. Also, if you have streams in the playlist when you open Amarok, the startup can take a little longer.

On the other hand, if you don't use KDE, but a different desktop environment, startup time can be increased very slightly because there are more libraries to be loaded, although it shouldn't be relevant.

Development questions

How do I get a GIT version of Amarok?

How to obtain and build Amarok Git

Why isn't Amarok part of KDEmultimedia?

The developers don't want the man telling them when they can release. (Meaning, packages in KDE proper have a release schedule that doesn't fit with Amarok's fast-paced development).

I've found a bug / I've got a great idea for Amarok!

Please report it at http://bugs.kde.org, if you have a list of suggestions/wishes it may be best to send them to our mailing list: <amarok@kde.org>. Simply posting the idea to our IRC channels or on an obscure wiki page won't help much as the given information will get lost.

Do you accept patches?

Happily! Your best course of action is to let us know what you plan to do before you do any work so we can discuss it, but don't fret; we haven't turned down a patch yet! Discussion is mostly to help you patch the correct bits of Amarok. Then either submit a patch to the mailing list, or create a Merge Request in gitorious. If you have a bug fix then just go ahead, this is open source after all :)

Why did you choose the name Amarok?

Amarok is an album by British composer Mike Oldfield. Project founder Mark Kretschmann happens to like it a lot, and he thought the name had a nice sound. Plus, of course, it contains the all important K. :)

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