GSoC project proposal: Audio CD support for Amarok

[Jeff Mitchell]

Nikolaj Hald Nielsen wrote:
> I think this could make for a really cool project.
> 
> One thing to look into and include in the proposal is using KDE's
> audiocd KIO slave to do the encoding, as that actually supports on the
> fly encoding of tracks from a cd into one of several formats.
> 
> To try this, in a KDE session, put a cd into your drive and type
> "audiocd://" in either dolphin or konqueror. That will give you a
> virtual view of the cd. The files in the different directories
> actually do not exists, but the ogg, flac and so on files are created
> on the fly as you try to copy them somewhere else.

This, by the way, is entirely possible, because I added support for
Amarok to import music exactly this way in 1.4.  I'm not sure if the
audiocd:// slave works in KDE 4 though; so if not, that might be a way
to start.

The good news is that if it *is* working, making Amarok play Audio CDs
would pretty much be as simple as having it play the WAV files available
through the slave.  In fact, this already also allows ripping to various
formats, but doesn't support many options for them -- for instance, you
can't specify specific lame encoding options.  So be sure that if you
are working on this, that you not only include common options in a GUI,
but allow people to specify their own.  But you have to make sure it's
insulated within Amarok -- people shouldn't need to know anything about
audiocd:// for playing and ripping CDs in Amarok; likewise, they
shouldn't have to figure out that they need to configure the audiocd://
slave inside System Settings -- Amarok should probably simply read and
write the same settings, or at a minimum launch the appropriate kcm module.

The audiocd kioslave option may not be a good one if it's not
cross-platform...playing and ripping CDs is definitely something we want
to support on every platform.

By the way, I'd change the title of the proposal.  Audio CD support
sounds like playback support, which probably isn't hard enough to
warrant a SoC slot -- but playback *and* ripping support I think is
(although it may be relatively easy, depending on the status of the
audiocd:// slave, in which case I hope you'd use extra time
productively).  So my suggestion would be to make sure when you submit
your proposal in Melange to have the subject line convey that your
proposal with do both, because it will prevent people from dismissing it
outright when they are going through and scoring applications.

--Jeff

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