[Kde-extra-gear] amaroK 'Fast Forward' 1.4-beta1 Released!
Mark Kretschmann
markey at web.de
Mon Feb 13 10:57:26 CET 2006
Announcing version 1.4-beta1 of the amaroK 'Fast Forward' series
We are proud to announce the first beta release of amaroK 1.4, the 'Fast
Forward' series. This generation has a lot of shiny new features and
eye-candy. amaroK development has literally been in fast forward mode since
November, just to bring you the best media experience you could ever imagine,
so check it out NOW! Hunt and squash some bugs, not only to help the amaroK
team, but also for your own personal enjoyment.
Some of the highlights:
=======================
* Support for Metadata (Tags) in WMA, MP4/AAC and RealMedia (RA,RV,RM) files
* Scriptable lyrics support, amaroK can now get lyrics from ANY lyrics site
(if you, or someone else, make a simple script-based plugin)
* Switchable Wikipedia locale
* The xine engine now has gapless playback (Needs xine-lib 1.1.1) and audio CD
support with CDDB lookups
* Reworked media device system, the Apple® iPod® support has been improved
enormously in the 1.4 series
* iRiver®/ifp and generic media devices are now also supported, though the
latter one is still quite unstable
* Moodbar, a visual representation of your music's mood (requires exscalibar)
* Lots and lots of user interface improvements
* And last but not least increased stability by improved under-the-hood code
CHANGES VERSION 1.4-beta1:
==========================
FEATURES:
* AudioCD (CDDA) support for xine-engine, including CDDB lookup. Patch by
Alberto Griggio <alberto.griggio at gmail.com>. (BR 121647)
* The Helix engine now supports direct alsa playback using Realplayer 10.
* New DCOP call "player: setVolumeRelative(int ticks)".
* Options for Random Mode to favor tracks with a higher rating, score, or
ones less recently played.
* Support for playing entire albums. This works just like normal, except
when choosing the next track, it'll go to the next track from the album
it finds in the playlist, or the first track of another album otherwise.
* Support for plain VFAT devices in the Media Device browser.
* You can now mousewheel over a track's queue label to change its position
in the queue.
* Added a time-filter to the CollectionBrowser. Now you can make it show
only those tracks, which have been added to your collection within the
last day, week, month or year.
* Fit to Width for the playlist columns is now optional (accessible in the
context menu for the column headers).
* On-the-fly transcoding when transferring to media devices, provided
that an appropriate transcoding script is running.
* Handle compilations as such on iPods.
* New DCOP calls "mediabrowser: ..." for interfacing with media devices.
* Multiple simultaneously connected media devices.
* Lyrics support is now scriptable. This allows to add support for any
lyrics site, and makes it possible to provide upgrades. (BR 94437)
* New DCOP call "contextbrowser: showLyrics(string)".
* New 'File Size' column in the playlist.
* Amarok now supports ASX playlist files. (BR 114051)
* New DCOP call "collection: isDirInCollection(const QString& path )".
* New DCOP call "playlist: removeByIndex(int)". (BR 119143)
* For mp3, aac/mp4, and ogg vorbis, it's possible to use Disc Number and
Composer tags. (BR 110675) (BR 90503)
* For xine-lib 1.1.1 and greater, xine engine has gapless playback. amaroK
is now "The Wall" compatible. (BR 77766)
* Option for selecting external web browser in amaroK. No longer requires
KDE-Base. (BR 106015)
* Press Enter in the Collection Browser filter to send all the visible
tracks to the playlist.
* Hold Ctrl while pressing Enter in the playlist's filter to apply to all
visible items instead of just the first, and Shift to only queue and not
play them.
* Tags can be edited inline in the playlist by clicking on a single
selected
item.
* Switchable Wikipedia locale. (BR 104383)
* Initial port of GStreamer engine to GStreamer 0.10.
* Drag albums and compilations from context browser to media device and
playlist browser.
* Browse your collection and other related artists with context browser.
* Copy artwork to iPods capable of displaying it.
* Show extended podcast info on iPod.
* Optionally update playcount for items played on iPod and submit them
to last.fm and synchronize ratings between amaroK and iPod.
* Tracks can now be rated from 1-5 stars manually, in addition to the
score which amaroK calculates automatically based on your listening
habits. You
can use the 'Rating' column and Win+1..5 to change the rating.
* Ability to copy items from iPod and from filebrowser to collection.
* New 'Last Played' column in the playlist, showing when the track was
last played. (Like in the Context Browser.)
* Browsers can be now accessed with keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl+1..5.
Also Ctrl+0 to close the current one, and Ctrl+Tab to switch the focus
between the playlist and the active browser.
* Downloaded podcast episodes can be deleted from the context menu.
* New DCOP call "player: osdEnabled".
* Add contents of smart amaroK playlists as playlist to media device.
* Mediabrowser support for the iRiver iFP series!
* New dcop call playlistbrowser loadPlaylist. (BR 110082)
* New Edit Track Information dialog. Lyrics can be edited there, comments
can have more than one line, some statistics and tag guessing from
filename. (BR 93982)
* Show/hide browsers via context menu. (BR 110823)
* Display disk space on media device.
* Copy standard and amaroK playlists to media device.
* Create playlist from items transferred to iPod.
* Edit dumb iPod playlists with media browser.
* Ability to read audible.com .aa file metadata and to transfer audiobooks
to iPod via file browser.
* Optionally add new podcasts to media device transfer queue on download
and remove podcasts already listened to on media device connect.
* Add podcast shows to the Podcast folder on iPods.
* Persistent media device transfer queue.
* Incremental update of media device view.
* Automatic scanning for stale and orphaned iPod items.
* Moodbar!
* configure: report not included extra features (BR 115057)
* Ability to uninstall context-browser themes. (BR 111449)
* More columns available in the Flat View of the Collection Browser.
* New Collection Scanner, running in an external process. No longer can
amaroK crash while scanning the Collection :)
* Statistics tool!
* Dragging external playlists into the playlist browser will add them.
* NMM engine now has a configure dialog.
* Collection scanner now supports WMA, MP4/AAC, and RealMedia (RA,RV,RM).
* You can now Organize Music from the Collection Browser, to move and
rename files to a logical place in your collection folders based on
their tags.
* Option to crossfade only on manual track changes. Useful for listening
to consecutive tracks on a single album.
CHANGES:
* Dynamic Mode is now stateless, meaning there's no Dynamic Mode any more,
only loading and unloading of Dynamic Playlists. There's also now a nice
info bar above the playlist when a Dynamic Playlist is loaded.
* The major huge context menu used for hiding/showing columns in the
playlist has been replaced with a shorter one and a nice dialog.
* Elapsed time / length in the systray tooltip now updates in real time as
the song progresses.
* Tooltips in the playlist for truncated text are now shown directly above
the text, giving the effect of it being expanded to its full length.
* The option for restarting scripts automatically at startup is removed,
as it is now the default behaviour.
* Reduced memory usage for large playlists to under 30% of pre-1.4
versions. (Measured as the difference in memory usage between an empty
playlist and loading the 'All Collection' smart playlist.)
* Import iTunes album art from directories.
* Media Devices (Apple iPod, iRiver iFP, ...) are now handled with
plugins.
* New default image for albums with no cover art.
* When tabbing between cells while editing tags in the playlist, autosave
the contents of the previous tag you edited, so you don't have to
constantly go in and out of editing mode to edit lots of tags.
* When saving playlists, if there's already one with the same name,
instead of complaining about it, smartly append (2), (3), etc. to the
end.
* 'Stop Playing After Track' now has a shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+V), and a global
shortcut for the currently playing track (Ctrl+Win+V).
* Various keyboard usability and focus tweaks so using amaroK with the
keyboard is nicer.
* Upgraded internal SQLite database library to version 3.2.7.
* Recoding mp3 tags has been removed due to many unjustified
complications.
* Viewing track information of remote media will show the url.
* "Update"-button is now hidden in the collection browser if "Watch
folders for changes" is enabled in the options.
* Playlist Browser now remembers which entries were open across startups.
* The tooltip and the menu from the queue icon in the statusbar now shows
the total length of the queued tracks.
* The Home tab has been merged into the Current tab, now called Music.
* New look for the current track marker in the playlist. Pimp my roK!
* When turning either random or dynamic mode on, turn the other off,
instead of completely disabling random mode when dynamic is on.
* libgpod from gtkpod replaces kio based iPod support for improved
compatibility with various iPod models.
BUGFIXES:
* Dragging text to a filter line edit would still show the "Filter
Here..." text in the background. (BR 108876)
* Don't show an empty playlist length holder in the statusbar.
* Allow for % and _ in tags, and filter them correctly.
* Do not copy files of types an iPod is not capable of playing to the
iPod. (BR 117486)
* Also take track number into account when comparing tags for checking
if a track is already present on iPod. (BR 117380)
* iPod nanos would not switch off during playing songs added with amaroK
because of their file size not being set.
* "Show Fullsize" now works for ID3 embedded cover images. (BR 114517)
* Fix possible bug when saving unencoded podcasts to strange file systems.
* OSD Preview did not update colours when toggling 'Use custom colours'
option. (BR 115965)
* Cached lyrics are not erased when rescanning. (BR 110489)
* No more "can't create amazon table" warnings. (BR 113930)
* Creating a new playlist via drag-and-drop no longer shows duplicates
of each song until amaroK is restarted.
The amaroK team
---------------
amaroK is a soundsystem-independent audio-player for *nix. Its interface uses
a powerful "browser" metaphor that allows you to create playlists that make
the most of your music collection. We have a fast development-cycle and
super-happy users. We also provide pensions and other employment-benefits.
"Easily the best media-player for Linux at the moment. Install it now!"
- Linux Format Magazine
WWW: http://amarok.kde.org
WIKI: http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki
IRC: irc.freenode.net - #amarok, #amarok.de
MAIL: amarok-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
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