Description: It would be nice to see a mixture of Kaffeine and amaroK in order to make a powerfull and rich media player in KDE. What is your opinion? (I saw that many users disagree on a mixture, so i change my propose)
What about making amaroK playing video using an engine? (xine, mplayer, etc)
Hello, amaroK is open source, if you want video support, you can program a plugin, then add it to amaroK. You can then put it out on kde-apps so that others could use it, maybe some day it will be implemented in amaroK!
I really want video support in amaroK, look at iTunes, the only thing iTunes beat amaroK on is video support
I am in favor of ditching Kaffeine and all the other Linux video players and adding video support (with no video "collection database", obviously) to Amarok.
My reasoning? Very simple: from the user's POV playing video and playing audio has the same verb: "playing".
Most (all?) video formats don't have metadata support, meaning the user would have to enter it manually. Guessing based on filename might work, but is only a partial solution.
Usually there are only several big video files (mostly movies), and those are relatively rarely played. This contrasts with audio, which is usually a big quantity, but rarely changed.
As for you personally, how many video files do you have?
How is an app that does everything useless? If it's done well wouldn't it make it more usefull? How would it become worhless? If amorok did start to be able to play video would you stop using it for music just because it was able to play video as well? Kaffeine is able to play both. why not amarok? I don't know why people are so quick to shoot down an idea like this.
I've noticed that allot of people complain when an app does more than one thing, yet they also complain that they have too many apps installled. Amarok already does allot, it plays just about any audio file be it local or remote. It even does streaming audio. Why would it be that bad to add video capabilities? I for one think it would be a good idea. AmaroK already uses the xine engine, which is a video engine is it not? I don't use amarok to play audio cd's or streams. does this mean that amarok should have not put in the ability to do this? No, because someone esle might find it usefull. If amarok started playing video I wouldn't need another multimedia player. Not even kaffeine.
Amarok wouldn't need to add video to a database. It could just open them the way any other program would.
I Dont like even idea that Kaffeine can play audio. I like that i have one GOOD software to do one task.
I like the idea that Kaffeine could have samekind metadata catalog as amarok, but for videos, it would has tags like names, series, actors, time, framerate, year and so on, if someone watch DVD, kaffeine could get infos from IMDB (what would be preferred for other video files too for series, and user should then just search things by manually).
Nobody said that you have to use the video capabilities of amaroK. If you like using amaroK for music and kaffeine for video, thats your matter. You may still use amaroK for music and kaffeine for video even if amaroK became video capable.... that's your choice...
You don't like that kaffeine plays audio? If it didn't then the movies would be pretty dull without being able to hear what's going on in the movie. This isn't what you had in mind of course but I couldn't resist my little joke.
And your joke was good ;-)
Of course developers could just add "kaffeine support" for amarok but then they would need to make it so that user needs enable it from settings, by default it should be off and it should not interrupt to play music.
And if kaffeine would get integrated to amarok, amarok developing would became more much harder and updates should be more often or later, just depending how kaffeine updates things.
Nope, i like that i have best audio player and i have good videoplayer in my hands.
I dont like to use WMP on those machines what have it. It's good idea if you thing you could have same GUI for video and music, but then we would need to forget amarok's great GUI, just to get video player together it, so it would not show music player options when watchin video what would confuse normal users.
amaroK can use the xine engine... The xine engine has video capabilities... I don't believe that it would be so difficult to make amaroK video "capable" (its already video capable, it doesn't show video image).
Confusing normal users? Forget the great amaroK gui? "so it would not show music player options when watchin video" What's the point of hiding music player options? Video files are like audio files... They just contain an extra stream (video). You can use all the music options on videos [equalizer, scripts, statistics, cd covers(dvd covers) etc, etc, etc,]
Thing is, people that complain because they have too many apps can always CHOOSE wich apps they want to keep. I think if you have one extraordinary app like Amarok being the best at audio, why make it all bloated by adding a capability for wich there's already an excellent app?
The issue of "being bloated" has been dabated over and over. What exactly is your definition of being bloated? And how exactly would amarok become bloated?
I don't need another all-in-one player. What I need is useful and flexible music player and Amarok is defintely the best. When something tries to deal with everything then it is useless. :)
Amarok should be for music only.
What about Konqueror? It deals with E V E R Y T H I N G! It's a file manager, web browser, console etc, etc, etc and vitiates the "Old Fashion" idea of "dealing with everything makes more mess". A program that does more thing than the promised, is classified as a powerful program.
I like both kaffeine and Amarok.
But why should the 2 software become one unique ?
I think it would be better to add a database support in Kaffeine, and better if it's compatible with Amarok, but a Video oriented DB.
And for Kaffeine, plug-in should be about finding subtitles in spite of lyrics, etc...
But a movie does'nt have the same properties to be known than a Music Album. So i dond't belive that Amarok may be Video capable. ( and no computer may ever be Vista capable :)
"But why should the 2 software become one unique ?"
For usefullness... A new user has to deal with 1000 different media players. amaroK for audio, Kaffeine for video, mPlayer for video, XMMS for audio etc. Plus he have to get used to different ways of opening a media file. Making amaroK video capable, we introduce a new aspect of media playing in linux. One database with all the media files of the user. (i had a newbie girlfrend once that she wanted to use winamp 2 but she liked the database capabilities of Windows Media Player plus that winamp 2 was not video capable, so she dropped it)
Winamp 2 (2.9) can play videos and has the IMHO superior DB to WMP! It supports podcasts, streaming audio/video (nullsoft tv) etc.
Winamp 5 has the same features, but IMHO a little bit better. I loved Winamp.
A new user has to deal with 1000 different media players. amaroK for audio, Kaffeine for video, mPlayer for video, XMMS for audio etc.
A new user has to choose a music player and a video player, it's no so hard ;P
Well, the new kaffeine GUI is quite satisfactory for a video player. I am pretty sure it would lose its convenience by chaning it into an Amarok like 'GUI'.
I really don't aunderstand the hype on Amarok. The ui just looks and feels bad.
i think it's all about preferences... When i saw amaroK for the first time, i saw a messy program. I used to amaroK and i think that the interface is great. Its database capabilities are great.
I'm against making it the same application, but for making a video app that is similar in UI design to Amarok. Consistency is very important and since every KDE distro ships with Amarok, if the video player looked and acted like it, it would provide a consistent way of working with your multimedia. However each project should be allowed to go their own way in terms of tools they provide.
But it would be nice for us to have one unique application for all multimedia jobs, so you don't have to open 100 different applications in order to do your job. Video/Audio Playing/Streaming/Ripping/Burning/Recoding/Encoding...
I know it's only a mock-up, but if you ever get serious don't use that name. The first 2 syllables would be pronounced in English just like a highly offensive South African racial epithet, and with -rok on the end could be taken to be a derogatory phrase for the local music.
John.
Ratings & Comments
46 Comments
Hello, amaroK is open source, if you want video support, you can program a plugin, then add it to amaroK. You can then put it out on kde-apps so that others could use it, maybe some day it will be implemented in amaroK! I really want video support in amaroK, look at iTunes, the only thing iTunes beat amaroK on is video support
I am in favor of ditching Kaffeine and all the other Linux video players and adding video support (with no video "collection database", obviously) to Amarok. My reasoning? Very simple: from the user's POV playing video and playing audio has the same verb: "playing".
... with no video "collection database" ... Whay that? I'd like to have all my mediafiles in a DB.
- Most (all?) video formats don't have metadata support, meaning the user would have to enter it manually. Guessing based on filename might work, but is only a partial solution.
- Usually there are only several big video files (mostly movies), and those are relatively rarely played. This contrasts with audio, which is usually a big quantity, but rarely changed.
As for you personally, how many video files do you have?How is an app that does everything useless? If it's done well wouldn't it make it more usefull? How would it become worhless? If amorok did start to be able to play video would you stop using it for music just because it was able to play video as well? Kaffeine is able to play both. why not amarok? I don't know why people are so quick to shoot down an idea like this. I've noticed that allot of people complain when an app does more than one thing, yet they also complain that they have too many apps installled. Amarok already does allot, it plays just about any audio file be it local or remote. It even does streaming audio. Why would it be that bad to add video capabilities? I for one think it would be a good idea. AmaroK already uses the xine engine, which is a video engine is it not? I don't use amarok to play audio cd's or streams. does this mean that amarok should have not put in the ability to do this? No, because someone esle might find it usefull. If amarok started playing video I wouldn't need another multimedia player. Not even kaffeine. Amarok wouldn't need to add video to a database. It could just open them the way any other program would.
I Dont like even idea that Kaffeine can play audio. I like that i have one GOOD software to do one task. I like the idea that Kaffeine could have samekind metadata catalog as amarok, but for videos, it would has tags like names, series, actors, time, framerate, year and so on, if someone watch DVD, kaffeine could get infos from IMDB (what would be preferred for other video files too for series, and user should then just search things by manually).
Nobody said that you have to use the video capabilities of amaroK. If you like using amaroK for music and kaffeine for video, thats your matter. You may still use amaroK for music and kaffeine for video even if amaroK became video capable.... that's your choice...
You don't like that kaffeine plays audio? If it didn't then the movies would be pretty dull without being able to hear what's going on in the movie. This isn't what you had in mind of course but I couldn't resist my little joke.
And your joke was good ;-) Of course developers could just add "kaffeine support" for amarok but then they would need to make it so that user needs enable it from settings, by default it should be off and it should not interrupt to play music. And if kaffeine would get integrated to amarok, amarok developing would became more much harder and updates should be more often or later, just depending how kaffeine updates things. Nope, i like that i have best audio player and i have good videoplayer in my hands. I dont like to use WMP on those machines what have it. It's good idea if you thing you could have same GUI for video and music, but then we would need to forget amarok's great GUI, just to get video player together it, so it would not show music player options when watchin video what would confuse normal users.
amaroK can use the xine engine... The xine engine has video capabilities... I don't believe that it would be so difficult to make amaroK video "capable" (its already video capable, it doesn't show video image). Confusing normal users? Forget the great amaroK gui? "so it would not show music player options when watchin video" What's the point of hiding music player options? Video files are like audio files... They just contain an extra stream (video). You can use all the music options on videos [equalizer, scripts, statistics, cd covers(dvd covers) etc, etc, etc,]
Thing is, people that complain because they have too many apps can always CHOOSE wich apps they want to keep. I think if you have one extraordinary app like Amarok being the best at audio, why make it all bloated by adding a capability for wich there's already an excellent app?
The issue of "being bloated" has been dabated over and over. What exactly is your definition of being bloated? And how exactly would amarok become bloated?
I don't need another all-in-one player. What I need is useful and flexible music player and Amarok is defintely the best. When something tries to deal with everything then it is useless. :) Amarok should be for music only.
What about Konqueror? It deals with E V E R Y T H I N G! It's a file manager, web browser, console etc, etc, etc and vitiates the "Old Fashion" idea of "dealing with everything makes more mess". A program that does more thing than the promised, is classified as a powerful program.
I like both kaffeine and Amarok. But why should the 2 software become one unique ? I think it would be better to add a database support in Kaffeine, and better if it's compatible with Amarok, but a Video oriented DB. And for Kaffeine, plug-in should be about finding subtitles in spite of lyrics, etc... But a movie does'nt have the same properties to be known than a Music Album. So i dond't belive that Amarok may be Video capable. ( and no computer may ever be Vista capable :)
"But why should the 2 software become one unique ?" For usefullness... A new user has to deal with 1000 different media players. amaroK for audio, Kaffeine for video, mPlayer for video, XMMS for audio etc. Plus he have to get used to different ways of opening a media file. Making amaroK video capable, we introduce a new aspect of media playing in linux. One database with all the media files of the user. (i had a newbie girlfrend once that she wanted to use winamp 2 but she liked the database capabilities of Windows Media Player plus that winamp 2 was not video capable, so she dropped it)
Winamp 2 (2.9) can play videos and has the IMHO superior DB to WMP! It supports podcasts, streaming audio/video (nullsoft tv) etc. Winamp 5 has the same features, but IMHO a little bit better. I loved Winamp.
A new user has to deal with 1000 different media players. amaroK for audio, Kaffeine for video, mPlayer for video, XMMS for audio etc. A new user has to choose a music player and a video player, it's no so hard ;P
Well, the new kaffeine GUI is quite satisfactory for a video player. I am pretty sure it would lose its convenience by chaning it into an Amarok like 'GUI'. I really don't aunderstand the hype on Amarok. The ui just looks and feels bad.
i think it's all about preferences... When i saw amaroK for the first time, i saw a messy program. I used to amaroK and i think that the interface is great. Its database capabilities are great.
I'm against making it the same application, but for making a video app that is similar in UI design to Amarok. Consistency is very important and since every KDE distro ships with Amarok, if the video player looked and acted like it, it would provide a consistent way of working with your multimedia. However each project should be allowed to go their own way in terms of tools they provide.
But it would be nice for us to have one unique application for all multimedia jobs, so you don't have to open 100 different applications in order to do your job. Video/Audio Playing/Streaming/Ripping/Burning/Recoding/Encoding...
I know it's only a mock-up, but if you ever get serious don't use that name. The first 2 syllables would be pronounced in English just like a highly offensive South African racial epithet, and with -rok on the end could be taken to be a derogatory phrase for the local music. John.
Ok... lets make it KaffaroK :PP
Pronounciation is still the same. The word is VERY offensive!