amarok Archive

  • How to use Amarok to manage your iPod

    How to use Amarok to manage your iPod

    Posted on October 11, 2009 | No Comments

    Sometimes it can be difficult to manage your iPod in Linux without hacking iTunes on your Ubuntu machine. Today we take a look at using the popular music player Amarok to mange your iPod on Ubuntu.

    Install Amarok

    In case you don’t have Amarok, you can install it by dropping down to terminal. To open a terminal window click ALT+F2 and type “gnome-terminal” (without quotes).

    Run

    Or from the menu Applications \ Terminal.

    sshot-2009-10-06-[23-06-30]

    In the terminal window, type the following command and wait a couple of moments while Amarok is installed.

    sudo apt-get install amarok

    sshot-2009-10-06-[23-16-16]

    In order to enable support for mp3 format, type the following commands on your terminal window one by one.

    sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg

    sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-extras

    Managing Your iPod

    Before we can start using an iPod with Amarok, let’s make it’s the default player to manage your iPod. When you plug in your iPod, the following window will pop up.

    defaultamarok

    By default Rythmbox Music Player selected. From the drop down menu select “Open with other Application” and from the Add Application window and select Amarok.

    defaultamarok1

    If you want to make Amarok the default application to open your iPod in future, check the box “Always perform this action” and Click Ok.

    defaultamarok2

    Managing iPod in Amarok

    Now that we have made Amarok as the default application to launch your iPod we can easily transfer files to iPod. Go to Collection in Amarok, Right-click the file you want to transfer to iPod and click copy to collection and select iPod.

    defaultamarok4

    That’s it! The song is now copied to iPod. You can also select multiple tracks to transfer them simultaneously.

    defaultamarok5

    This should get you started with managing your iPod with Amarok on your Ubuntu machine.

    http://amarok.kde.org/

    Similar ArticlesFeatured Wiki Articles
    Latest Software ReviewsSuper User Daily
    Geek ArcadePopular Forum Threads


    Full Story

  • How-To: Install Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 from the Kubuntu Beta Backports

    How-To: Install Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 from the Kubuntu Beta Backports

    Posted on September 6, 2009 | No Comments

    The first beta of Amarok 2.2, codenamed 'Crystal Clear', was released on September 4 and packages are available for Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty from the Kubuntu Beta Backports.

    Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 comes with a huge number of bug fixes and many improvements and new features. To list some of them:
    - new videoclip applet
    - new photo applet
    - improved browser layout to the left
    - widgets can now be arranged differently from default
    - ratings
    - support for audio CDs
    - the playlist offers multi-level sorting now
    Those are only the highlights though, to see the full announcement and changelog read this.

    To install Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 in Kubuntu/Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope just follow the instructions below:

    First, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file with your favourite text editor, e.g.:

    sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

    Or:

    kdesudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list

    Next, add the following two lines:

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/beta/ubuntu karmic main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/beta/ubuntu karmic main

    Make sure to save the file and then add the trusted key for this repository:

    sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8AC93F7A

    Now update your package lists:

    sudo apt-get update

    Eventually, remove your existing Amarok installation:

    sudo apt-get remove --purge amarok
    sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

    And now install the latest Amarok:

    sudo apt-get install amarok

    This should be all. Run Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 by pressing Alt+F2 and typing amarok in KRunner.

    Full Story

  • 1 Year Ago: Amarok 1.4.10 Review [Oldies but Goldies]

    1 Year Ago: Amarok 1.4.10 Review [Oldies but Goldies]

    Posted on August 11, 2009 | No Comments
    Almost one year ago, on August 13, 2008, the last version of Amarok 1.4 for KDE3 was released. Since Amarok 2 for KDE4 was launched, bringing a completely redesigned interface and changing mostly all the major design concepts, users of this great player divided into two groups, the ones who still like 1.4 better and the ones who look forward for a complete Amarok 2.x (which still lacks many features from the old 1.4).


    Edit: This is by no means an Amarok 2.x critique, you can see I barely mentioned it here. It's just a nostalgic review of a great audio player.

    Amarok is the most popular audio player on Linux, no doubt about that. Amarok 1.4 reached a level of maturity and completion which few (if any!) audio players ever reached. It had any possible feature available, it was easy to use and, once the codecs were installed, it could handle any audio file type.

    Features in 1.4 - countless
    One of the strongest points of Amarok was the powerful and complete music collection management, which allowed the users to easily organise their music using the default SQLite database, or MySQL or Postgresql for large collections, since the latter two are faster. Amarok 1.4.10 included a cover manager, automatically fetching of covers from Amazon.com, lyrics fetching, Wikipedia information, various playlists (including smart playlists), support for podcasts, Internet radio, tags, Last.fm song submission, scripts, powerful and fast playlist, file browser, drag-and-drop, OSD (on-screen display), themes, font customisation, Last.fm streams, support for audio CDs, support for iPods and other MP3 devices, Magnatune integration, statistics, equalizer, visualizations, ratings, update and rescan collection options, real-time file watcher, global shortcuts, system tray integration and... did I mention all of them? I'm sure I missed a few.

    Interface
    The interface was basically divided into two widgets:
    - the playlist, which offered plenty of sorting fields, including artist, album, track number, bitrate, filename, location, play count; all of these could be arranged in any order and you could choose which of them to be displayed and which not

    - the side panel, which included tabs for the current playing track, lyrics, Wikipedia; a collection tab which could show the music collection sorted by several rules (for example by Artist/Year - Album); the playlists, files, devices and Magnatune tabs were also available here

    Playlist
    At the bottom of the playlist the usual Play/Pause, Stop, Next and Previous Track buttons were available. You could also change the volume and the analyzer type from here. Repeating the album, track, or entire playlist was also available, and the playlist could be shuffled at any time. You could also undo changes to the playlist.

    Music collection
    Amarok 1.4 used by default the SQLite database for managing the music collection, but the Wiki also offered a detailed guide on how to simply enable support for MySQL or Postgresql databases. Amarok offered the possibility to scan specific music directories and keep track of any changes in these. You could set ratings for every song, save lyrics, show only songs played in the last few days or weeks, view the music in the Collection tab using the flat, tree or iPod view modes, and including options to sort them using a specific order. Besides those, Amarok 1.4 also had a statistics system implemented, which would show what are the favourite tracks or albums, what are the most played tracks, newest items and favourite artists.

    Cover manager
    The cover manager could fetch all the covers from Amazon.com or browse in the song's directory for files with names like cover.png or front.jpg.


    Script manager
    Amarok supported scripts in languages like Python or even Bash, some of those being the popular WikiLyrics or the playlist2html ones. I once wrote a (rather CPU intensive, but that's not the point) simple script to dcop Kopete to change the avatar's picture using the currently cover of the album playing in Amarok. And that was in Bash, in a few lines.


    Powerful and productive tag editor
    Amarok introduced an awesome tag editor, which allowed the user to edit the tags for several tracks at once. For example, if you had an album you could edit all the artist, album and year fields in one command, instead of for each track individually.


    File browser, iPod support, Magnatune and Last.fm integration
    Amarok 1.4 had an integrated file browser from which you could drag and drop audio files to the playlist and instantly play them. There was even a Konqueror sidebar available for Amarok. One of the great features for those who needed to synchronise their music with their MP3 player was device support. Magnatune integration (a music shop for free music) was another plus, and the Last.fm radio and Last.fm song submission really made it an even more awesome experience.

    Lyrics and Wikipedia
    There were several scripts for fetching lyrics from various websites and show them in the Lyrics tab. There was even a script called ConTEXT, which could retrieve album reviews, HTML and TXT files from the local folder and display all that info inside Amarok. Wikipedia integration was also a great addition, finding info about your favourite artist, album or song being one click away.

    10-band Equalizer
    Amarok's equalizer included 10 bands and presets, so you could instantly choose default presets like Full bass, Treble, Reggae, Pop, Rock, Party etc.

    Configuration
    Amarok 1.4 allowed to tweak its interface by using themes, changing the colours and fonts. It also offered the option to enable/disable scores and ratings; use song crossfading and fadeout; resume playing when starting Amarok; a highly configurable OSD, configuration of the sound system and media device handling.

    I think to cover all of the Amarok 1.4 features in detail would take a 50-page book, which is not the scope of this article. Amarok 1.4 was probably the best player ever created, at least for the Linux platform. Looking forward to 2.x, which takes big steps towards implementing all the features his older brother had.

    Full Story