Amarok 2.8 "Return To The Origin" Released

After few months of development, finally Amarok 2.8 has been officially released. It also marks the comeback of their founder, Mark Kretschmann to the team after going hiatus for some time.

What are the highlights?

• A fancy audio analyzer visualization applet
• Smooth fade-out when pausing music
• Many UI improvements and visual tweaks including better support for alternate color themes
• Significantly enhanced MusicBrainz tagger
• Power management awareness with a pair of new configuration options
• Performance optimizations and responsiveness tuning all over Amarok

This release also features the first code contributions by our current Google Summer of Code students: please welcome Anmol Ahuja, Konrad Zemek and Tatjana Gornak. Our release manager Matěj Laitl takes part in GSoC as well.

Here are the detailed changelog:

Features

• Tracks from Recently Played List widget can now directly be added to the playlist. (BR 279263, BR 296090)
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• Ctrl+C copies the currently playing artist & title to the clipboard. (BR 228872) Patch by fleissig fleissig.
• Volume fade-out is now also available for pause.
• The Files browser now has a Refresh button. (BR 213666)
• The active playlist item is animated with a soft glow effect.
• Added an audio analyzer visualization applet.
• Added a function for resetting the GUI layout back to default state. (BR 300753)
• Pressing enter when searching collections now adds found tracks to the playlist and clears the search bar, this is a very convenient way to populate your playlist.
• Allow to transcode only certain (different format, playability) tracks when transferring them to a collection; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 312407)
• On-Screen-Display fades in/out smoothly.
• Added support for .asx playlists; patch by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 170207)
• Add Radio GFM radio streams to Cool Stream Script. (BR 317978)
• Added options to pause playback on system suspend and to inhibit automatic suspend if playing a track (enabled by default); patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 259862) (BR 222571)
• Playlist files are now read asynchronously when possible; patch and great deal of refactoring by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 291934)
• Added support to filter tracks to scrobble to Last.fm by label. Patch by Vedant Agarwala. (BR 140198)
• Added transcoding support for Opus codec if ffmpeg is compiled with support for the libopus library, patch by Martin Brodbeck.
• Added keyboard shortcuts for small 2 s seeks (Ctrl + Left/Right) and long 1 minute seeks (Shift + Left/Right) in addition to standard 10 s seeks. Durations are now configurable in amarokrc, see Amarok Handbook. Patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 177258)
• Added support for files in Opus codec if Amarok is compiled against recent enough TagLib (post 1.8), patch by Martin Brodbeck. (BR 312905)
• Added Ctrl+H shortcut to randomize playlist, patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 208061)

Changes

• The Jamendo service now uses a higher quality MP3 format instead of Ogg Vorbis.
• Added an option whether adding tracks to playlist should start playing. (BR 322428)
• Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.3.
• Amarok now uses FindFFMpeg.cmake from kdelibs
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• Removed LikeBack (a development feature in debug builds). (BR 312498) (BR 252323)
• Collection Browser: Artist level was renamed to Track Artist and replaced by Album Artist by default. Various Artists item is no longer shown under Track Artist level.
• Removed the splash screen.
• Playlist-related actions were harmonized, double-clicking or pressing enter will append tracks to playlist, using any "play media" action or middle-clicking will prepend tracks to queue and immediately start playing. (BR 145468, BR 145490, BR 194549)
• When a new collection plugin is enabled, its collections appear immediately without a need for restart.
• Update the MusicBrainz tagger to MusicBrainz web service 2, make it show some more good suggestions for tagging, and add some options to help choosing the best results.
• Add note about generating .mood files into Moodbar Options; patch by Harsh Gupta with tweaks by Matěj Laitl. (BR 289483)
• Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.2.
• Add prepareToQuit() signal to Amarok.Window script bindings; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 241066)
• Data CDs are now recognized in Amarok; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 316128)
• On-Screen-Display now uses the system font instead of hardcoded sans-serif. (BR 248707)
• Fancy behavior of some context menus showing different actions when Shift key is held has been reverted. All entries are now shown all the time.
• The dynamic playlist behavior has changed. It will no longer generate "pretty good" playlists that do not fulfill the given biases. Instead it might add no song at all if given impossible-to-fulfill conditions.
• The "tracks have been hidden in the playlist" warning when filtering the playlist is now displayed inside the playlist. (BR 260352)
• Update tag widget for Layout edit, filter edit, organize collection and guess tag dialog.
• When fadeout and/or Replay Gain isn't possible, gray-out related UI elements in order not to fool users.

Bugfixes

• Don't reload Wikipedia applet content if artist/album have not changed. Patch by Frank Meerkoetter. (BR 112044)
• Jamendo service: Albums are now downloaded directly instead of going via BitTorrent. This is far more reliable and also supports on-the-fly transcoding. (BR 299434)
• Work-around Solid UDisks2 backend bug that caused USB Mass Storage devices and iPods not being recognized when connected before Amarok was started. Also fixes a bug where blank devices would appear in Play Media dialog. (BR 322980)
• Definitely fix a bug where storing Last.fm credentials in plain-text isn't offered when KWallet is disabled. (BR 315306)
• Radio streams from scripted services are now instantly playable. (BR 320718)
• Recently Played List widget now keeps its own time for tracks instead of relying on the Last Played statistic. (BR 302485)
• Prevent hitting an assertion failure if just removed track from the Local Collection is edited. (BR 322474)
• Fixed a regression introduced in 2.8 Beta where tracks in the Local Collection were sometimes forgotten and then found again. (BR 322603)
• Fixed invalid SQL queries when you have files or folders with an apostrophe in your collection. (BR 322415)
• Fixed organizing/copying/moving tracks to Local Collection on Windows. (BR 279560, BR 302251)
• Various usability improvements for the applet toolbar. (BR 197948)
• Removed broken Apply button in applets' settings dialog. (BR 322015)
• Fix incorrect colors in Context View toolbar when switching themes. (BR 301305)
• Many fixes for various bugs with switching desktop color themes at runtime, including OSD, spectrum analyzer, collection browser.
• Avoid updating the MPRIS2 Metadata between tracks. (BR 321602)
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• When you remove whole directories from the Local Collection and have Watch Folders for Changes enabled, the tracks now disappear from Collection Browser. (BR 311078)
• Fix dynamic playlist bug: When "Automatically scroll playlist to current track" was enabled, Amarok would keep scrolling to the bottom. (BR 284214)
• Fix a problem where ghost tracks would remain in the Local Collection until the database is wiped. (BR 319084)
• Added missing CMake check for QtWebKit. (BR 321598)
• Definitely fix a bug where Local Collection wouldn't update in browser. (BR 262504)
• Fix crashed caused by race conditions at the end of the track scanning. (BR 319835)
• Fix crash when disabling the Free Music Charts script. (BR 321329)
• Albums having same name but different album artist won't be mixed together on the playlist if sorting by album is enabled.
• Fix crash on startup with KDE 4.11. Patch by Hrvoje Senjan. (BR 320855)
• Fix tracks not able to be dragged around when playlist is shuffled. (BR 320129)
• Prevent Last.fm scrobbles not being submitted until restart due to change in liblastfm 1.0.7. (BR 320219)
• Resume Playback on Start will correctly restore paused state, instead of always starting in playing state. (BR 313330)
• Optimize removal of tens of thousands of tracks from playlist. (BR 316242)
• Fix `amarok --queue` which didn't actually queue the tracks. (BR 317385)
• Fix suboptimal initial MusicBrainz tag dialog size by remembering it. (BR 269454)
• Fix file-browser becoming empty when a file was moved to trash. (BR 317944)
• Fix `amarok --play file.mp3` option didn't actually start playback.
• Reason why a particular track is not playable is now shown in playlist tooltip; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 313649)
• Pre-apmlifier in equalizer is now only enabled if it is actually supported; patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 301311)
• Fix Amarok crashed while doing "Organize Files" (BR 317980)
• Fix Amarok erroneously merges two albums. (BR 216759, BR 272802)
• Fix Crash on very long artist names. (BR 276894)
• Fix Move tracks to rubbish and the current track cover changes to the deleted cover. (BR 306735)
• Fix theoretical configwidget leak in services. (BR 301352)
• Fix "Local collection" text label is truncated with large font. (BR 282561)
• Fix crash by putting a broadcast in the playlist. (BR 313718)
• Fix Keyboard navigates context menu in collection will move two items. (BR 307794)
• Fix add track to playlist by double click on arrow in the collection. (BR 279513)
• Fix VFAT safe names missing a couple of idiosyncrasies. (BR 312574)
• Clarify message when Last.fm streams are not available. (BR 315771)
• Fix crash when Dynamic Playlist based on last.fm is aborted. (BR 314243)
• Fix Group by directory doesn't work in main playlist. (BR 265415)
• Don't remove common labels when editing the tags of multiple tracks. (BR 316043)
• Fix vertical positioning of On-Screen-Display. (BR 269788)
• Fix OSD sometimes misplaces the font and the font's shadow. (BR 257643)
• Prevent inability to save Last.fm password in corner cases. (BR 315306)
• Fix "Copy to Collection" window doesn't fit on small screens. (BR 283361)
• Fix crash when quitting Amarok with Statistics Synchronization open. (BR 315525)
• Fix items moving around when expanded in collection browser. (BR 305602)
• Fix Organize collection folder deletion going 'too far'. (BR 314348)
• Fix %albumartist% placeholder translates to some strange unicode symbol. (BR 314351)
• Fix bumpy fade-out when first used. (BR 312062)
• Fix crash when switching/removing organize collection presets. (BR 314344)
• Fix crash on start if a playlist source is unavailable. (BR 313460)
• Fix Copy/Move to collection picks up wrong destination path and fails silently. (BR 314460)
• Cleanup TrackOrganizer. (BR 305291)
• Fix Editing Playist Layout Editor. (BR 250594)
• Fix Display glitch for rating in verbose playlist. (BR 300118)
• Refactoring Ampache service, fix Albums with multiple disks not listed correctly. (BR 249857)
• Fix playlist sorting by type. (BR 249338)
• Fix subtle bugs when a long fade-out is initiated near the song end.
• Don't try to fade-out with phonon backends that don't support it. (vlc)
• Fix Can't edit & save an existing equalizer preset. (BR 241874)
• Clean up Equalizer Dialog. (BR 274972)