[Feedback] single database, multiple computers | making amarok better

[Jeff Mitchell]

Quoting dlutolf at worldcom.ch:
> 1: I have a home server holding a few gigs of music, and running a mysql
> server. So I created an amarok DB on my mysql server, and all the music
> files are being accessed through an nfs share (which always has the same
> path, regardless of which machine I use it on). I hoped I could have the
> same settings on all computers (including playlists, album covers, etc..)
> without having to create links to ~/.kde3.5/share/apps/amarok and the
> like.

Problem is that files are constantly being created and updated in  
Amarok's home directory.  If you get two instances of the app writing  
to the same place at the same time, you get corruption.  Not all file  
sharing systems properly (can and/or do) lock files.

As for album covers, I'm not sure if we support album covers that are  
embedded into files.  I certainly don't think we support doing this  
embedding...but perhaps in the 2.0 series this will be something to  
look into.

> 2: When I listen to a song I like and it gets to the end, I like to simply
> press "play" again to listen to it from the start. in this case, rating
> goes down. this sucks.

Ratings are handled by scripts.  The default tries to keep a balanced  
score for your tracks and it uses the average percentage of a track's  
length that you listen to.  You may get better results by using the  
"Impulsive" script which is mostly influenced by how much of a song  
you listen to.  Or, write your own  :-)

> 3: again about rating: when creating playlists (especially when your
> collection is huge and you haven't used amarok for long and most songs have
> been never or seldom listened to) I want to listen to the start of a song
> and then say "good song, play the next please", "this is ok, next one" or
> even "this really sucks, next one". I can't. this sucks too. (I tried the
> "I love this" shortcut but did not notice any effect)

"I Love This" is for Last.fm.  You can do this in two keystrokes:  Use  
Win+(1,2,3,4,5) to set a track rating (press twice for a half rating,  
and a third press for a one-star rating removes the rating from the  
track), then Win+B to jump to the next track.  If you want to create  
playlists, it's pretty trivial to make Smart Playlists based on the  
ratings you set.

> 4: music videos. I'd like to use an external player (like vlc) to play the
> video contained in some files

Amarok 2.0 should have some support for this.

> 6: when searching for a song in the collection, I can press "enter" to add
> it to the playlist. it would be cool if I could do something like
> "ctrl+enter" to add it AND enque (or is it encue?) it.

You could file a wishlist item for this at bugs.kde.org.  It's not  
likely to make it into the 1.4 series but perhaps in the 2.0 series.

> 7: OSD can be activated with a global win+o (I think it's the default).
> but if you want not to have the OSD at the start of every song, you can't
> chose where you want the OSD to show up without activating and then
> deactivating automatic OSD

That's a good point...but as it requires a string change I don't see  
it for 1.4.  We can try to remember this for 2.0  :-)

> 9: playlists, webradios and podcasts: no search available. this sucks
> too.

This might change in 2.0.  Not sure yet.

> 10: tags. when a collection was built from a lot of strange sources, the
> tags are not always right. a tool to find similarities on tags (like case
> differences) and batch-rename would be cool

There are some dedicated tagging programs that might be best for this  
(free: EasyTag, not-free on Windows: Tag&Rename).

> keep it up guys, excellent work until now!

Glad you like it :-)

--Jeff