Bug 198857 - Amarok inconsistently loads FLAC metadata
Summary: Amarok inconsistently loads FLAC metadata
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: amarok
Classification: Applications
Component: Collections/Local (show other bugs)
Version: 2.1.1
Platform: Ubuntu Unspecified
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Amarok Developers
URL:
Keywords:
: 202330 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-07-04 05:09 UTC by ericaltendorf
Modified: 2009-12-09 11:34 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description ericaltendorf 2009-07-04 05:09:45 UTC
Version:           2.1.1 (using KDE 4.2.90)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

I am running Amarok 2.1.1 on KDE 4.2.90, and I am getting inconsistent performance loading FLACs I have recently encoded.  The FLACs will play, but sometimes the metadata (tags, bitrate, track length, etc) is completely missing.  Sometimes it is not -- on the same file.

Here is an example metaflac dump of a track which was loading fine for a while and now loads in Amarok without any metadata:

eric@bjork:/m/flac/Corduroy/Lisp$ metaflac --list Corduroy\ -\ 04\ -\ Vertical\ Slum.flac
METADATA block #0
  type: 0 (STREAMINFO)
  is last: false
  length: 34
  minimum blocksize: 4096 samples
  maximum blocksize: 4096 samples
  minimum framesize: 15 bytes
  maximum framesize: 12525 bytes
  sample_rate: 44100 Hz
  channels: 2
  bits-per-sample: 16
  total samples: 4635204
  MD5 signature: 3f2f44994ad5f9ebe85a61915d8b4e48
METADATA block #1
  type: 3 (SEEKTABLE)
  is last: false
  length: 198
  seek points: 11
    point 0: sample_number=0, stream_offset=0, frame_samples=4096
    point 1: sample_number=438272, stream_offset=1007503, frame_samples=4096
    point 2: sample_number=880640, stream_offset=2211647, frame_samples=4096
    point 3: sample_number=1318912, stream_offset=3418856, frame_samples=4096
    point 4: sample_number=1761280, stream_offset=4616883, frame_samples=4096
    point 5: sample_number=2203648, stream_offset=5789470, frame_samples=4096
    point 6: sample_number=2641920, stream_offset=6961811, frame_samples=4096
    point 7: sample_number=3084288, stream_offset=8159295, frame_samples=4096
    point 8: sample_number=3526656, stream_offset=9337043, frame_samples=4096
    point 9: sample_number=3964928, stream_offset=10465402, frame_samples=4096
    point 10: sample_number=4407296, stream_offset=11565115, frame_samples=4096
METADATA block #2
  type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
  is last: false
  length: 141
  vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917
  comments: 6
    comment[0]: ARTIST=Corduroy
    comment[1]: TRACKNUMBER=04
    comment[2]: ALBUM=Lisp
    comment[3]: TITLE=Vertical Slum
    comment[4]: GENRE=Rock
    comment[5]: DATE=1994
METADATA block #3
  type: 1 (PADDING)
  is last: true
  length: 8192
Comment 1 Myriam Schweingruber 2009-07-08 14:41:02 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 126511 ***
Comment 2 optiluca@gmail.com 2009-07-08 15:12:50 UTC
I am also experiencing this bug and after having read through bug 126511 I am led to believe that this is not the same issue.  In bug 126511 the issue is related to the usage of flac files in ogg containers, while here we are dealing with pure flac.  Also, while the issue in the other bug is persistant and predictable, it is completely sporadic in this case.  I had these same audio files with the 1.4 series and they played just fine, so this is a new bug introduced in amarok 2.x, therefore not a duplicate of 126511.

I will happily provide any info you might need to fix it as it is rather annoying :P

Thanks in advance :)
Comment 3 ericaltendorf 2009-07-08 17:50:52 UTC
Agreed.  I had looked at bug 126511 before filing this, and decided they were not dups.

The files involved here are pure FLACs, not OGG-wrapped and it is very inconsistent and irreproducible.

I never saw this problem in Amarok 1.4, though it is possible it is some weird interaction between the new version of Amarok and some new version of flac (the encoder).  This may be of some help in debugging, but still, the fundamental bug remains: metaflac reads the tags fine, and Amarok does not.

I'm unmarking the duplicate (hope that's alright), though leaving as unconfirmed until an Amarok developer acknowledges it.
Comment 4 Myriam Schweingruber 2009-07-09 18:09:07 UTC
Why do you use pure FLAC? It's since quite some time that FLAC is integrated in Xiph.Org and uses the Ogg Vorbis comment tagging, so you should consider changing to the more recent standard, which is as lossless as ever. And it helps for tagging and reading tags...

See also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis_comments
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac
Comment 5 ericaltendorf 2009-07-09 19:10:46 UTC
Native vs ogg FLAC has been debated endlessly; please let us not fork this bug into yet another such debate.  I have no interest in ogg; I have over 10,000 native FLAC tracks already and enjoy format consistency; as much of a consensus as I've seen on the net is towards native FLAC; it is more widely supported; certainly that is the current official recommendation of the FLAC folks: http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html#general__native_or_ogg

Also, regarding the vorbis comment format, did you read the metaflac output included in the original bug report?  In particular, this bit:

METADATA block #2
  type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
Comment 6 ericaltendorf 2009-07-11 21:28:49 UTC
Ping...

There are a lot of things about Amarok2 that are way worse than 1.4, but this is kind of a deal-breaker.  If it can't reliably load my FLAC music library, I'm going to have to give up on it and move to another player. :(
Comment 7 Lydia Pintscher 2009-07-28 19:17:03 UTC
Why is this still marked as NEEDSINFO? Changing.

@Jeff: Can you give some input on this maybe? I'm not sure who'd be best to handle this.
Comment 8 Jeff Mitchell 2009-07-28 19:32:27 UTC
Amarok 2.0 and 1.4 use the exact same TagLib library -- even the same version, since it hasn't had a release in more than a year and a half (but will soon) -- for reading metadata. So that shouldn't be an issue in and of itself.

This is almost certainly the exact same bug as bug 199388, bug 192027, bug 178973 and others, except that the people on this bug are using all FLAC and therefore think it's due to some issue with FLACs specifically when it was related to DB/caching problems generally.

To put it another way: this is likely already fixed in Git. If one of you wants to put it to a test drive, that would be great. If you want to help out even further, back up your mysqle directory beforehand so that if something goes wonky I can take a look (you may experience wonkiness that should be fixed with a full rescan, which should be kicked off automatically upon the schema upgrades).
Comment 9 Jeff Mitchell 2009-08-02 22:23:27 UTC
*** Bug 202330 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Myriam Schweingruber 2009-08-17 10:57:22 UTC
Well, I have a lot of FLAC encoded files, all show the tags correctly and play correctly. Consider this solved in Amarok 2.2-git