Version: 2.1.1 (using KDE 4.2.4) Installed from: Gentoo Packages Currently it is only possible to have one single local collection at once, but there are a lot of scenarios which would profit from having support for multiple local collections, e.g: JohnDoe has a Laptop which he uses as workstation at home but also on the road. He has a directory /home/JohnDoe/Music where he keeps some music he'd like to be able to listen while being on the road. At home there's a fileserver which is mounted at /media/Multimedia/Music. JohnDoe would like to be able to simply copy some music from his fileserver share over to his local directory using Amarok's interface and music management features like doing a rightclick on a track → Copy to Collection → Laptop Collection When introducing these changes the GUI for managing collections needs some changes. What about doing it like this: - The contextmenu of the root item of each collection in the collection view has 2 additional items: "Collection properties" and "Remove this collection from the list" - The "Collection properties" item opens a dialog which just looks like the dialog currently accessible through Settings → Configure Amarok → Collection - The collection dialog at Settings → Configure could be removed as it is moved now into the properties of each collection - On top of the collection view a button "Add collection" is shown - Options like "VFAT Restrictions" are added to the collection properties to make it easier having a collection on a low-compatibility filesystem like FAT32. Then files could be automatically renamed accordingly when copying them to this collection - the collection is just handled like a MSC device. What do you think? Please comment this idea - I think it shouldn't be really hard to implement this due to the new collections framework.
Another scenario where this feature might be really handy: John visits Mary and connects his HDD to Mary's computer - they'd like to synchronize their music collections. So Mary just adds the directory where the HDD was mounted as a 2nd collection to Amarok and they can start copying songs from Mary's collection to John's HDD and vice versa.
*** Bug 224345 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I think the current Digikam has a nice way how to manage multiple collections. Please take a look at it and feel inspired ;-)
*** Bug 195209 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 238836 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I was really glad if you could implement the possibility to specify additional folders which are treatened as a completedly separated collection. That would be great for users like me, who have a "main collection" which includes the well-tagged Albums and Songs and an other folder where the Music is messed up. Atm I don't include my untidy music folder in amarok's collection to avoid messing up my well-tagged music. That music can now only be accessed via the integrated Browser, where filtering and sorting is impossible. With a second collection these Problems will vanish immediately.
I see two use-cases for separate collections: 1.) As mentioned by Jochen Bauer, for separating well-tagged and structured from chaotic folders. (I also have this) 2.) For pluggable media with special requirements, like mobile players or usb-sticks. Example for 2.): I have a car-radio with usb-port which is able to play MP3 as well as Ogg Vorbis (Yeah!) files but only if they are located in the root-directory or subdirectories of it. Files cannot be played if they have a structure like %{artist}/%{album}/bla.mp3 which I use for my main collection on the hard drive. So it would be really nice if I can setup two collections with different file-structures and copy albums and songs between them which automatically get pushed into the assigned structure. Additionally a really nice feature would be automatic audio-format-conversion, e.g. if I copy FLAC files to a MP3-player which is not able to play them they are converted to MP3 on-the-fly. (Wasn't this feature in Amarok 1.4?)
it was mentioned already in comment #3 but I want to emphasise it again: In my opinion, concerning collection management, digikam just does it right: you can have as much collection as you want and they are categorised into - local collections, - collections on removable drives and - collections on the network
*** Bug 261201 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 55268 [details] local collections: a solution I append here also the my proposition to the resolution of this bug. Miguel
I also would like to see that. This is must have feature for anyone that listens to (properly tagged) classical and (album structured) modern music. Until now I wasn't able to use amarok at home because of this issue. Miguels Proposition would suit me perfectly.
Hmm, Miguel's proposition wouln't be actually hard to implement. I'll do some experimenting after 2.7 is released.
Any update on this? Thanks!