Using Amarok Media Player

For: Mepis Linux

by: je.saist

Amarok is widely touted to be one of the killer applications for the Linux Desktop. It is an awesome media player, but it can be a little intimidating to use. The good news is that Mepis bundles it in by default. The bad news is that the Mepis bundle is incomplete. This guide presumes that the following two guides have already been completed:

Media Support: libmad0 - libxine-extracodecs - libvisual

Media Support: Debian Multimedia

This guide also has two additional guides: Generic Media Player and Amarok First Run

Over this guide we will cover opening Amarok for the first time in Mepis, scanning for music, and playing music from files stored on the hard-drive. We will also cover using a Generic Media Player through Amarok. Lastly, we'll take a look at the visualization usage.

1: Why yes, I was watching Phantom of the Opera, why do you ask?  

Left Click on the K-Menu.





2: Left Click on Multimedia





3: Left Click on Audio Player (Amarok)





4: This is the screen we should encounter in Mepis if Amarok has never been used before. Amarok gives us some short instructions on creating a playlist in the right hand column, and the left hand column is asking to search the computer for music with build collection.





5: Left Click on Build Collection in the Left Hand Column.





6: Amarok will now pop up a box showing us our folders. By default Amarok will monitor the folders for new music and add it to the collection list.

Left Click on the + sign next to /home





7: Amarok will now list all the folders under /home.
Don't laugh too hard, I mentioned before that I have tendency to hose out my home directory on a regular basis.

Your own /home folder should be marked by having a little orange plug under the folder.





8: Left Click in the Check box next to your /home folder with the orange plug.

In this case, I'm putting a check next to Zerias





9: Then Left Click on OK.





10: Amarok could take a while to scan. When the scanning finishes, we should be on the Collection screen.

We can see here that Amarok was able to parse some of the music I had in my /home folder.





11: Go over to the left hand side of Amarok and Left Click on Context.





12: Context View shows albums that Amarok has been able to identify.

If you want to know who Chris Impellitteri is, lets just say "Worlds Fastest Guitar Player" and leave it at that.





13: I'm going to Left Click on of the albums Amarok located, in this case I'm clicking on Evanescence - Fallen





14: Amarok now shows the tracks found for the album. I'm going to Left Click on the First Track and Drag it Right, taking it into The Playlist.





15: the Play button is at the bottom of the Right Hand Column.

Left Clicking on the Play button starts the song, and as shown here, also pops up Amarok's On Screen Display





16: I'm just going to leave the track playing, and go back to Collection.

Left Click on Collection on the Far left of Amarok.





17: While the Left Hand column view changes, the playlist does not. You always know what's playing, unlike the default view of a competitor on Apple and Windows.





18: One of the Collection files is marked as Unknown. I'm going to Left Click on the + sign next to the First Unknown.

As shown, we get a drop down with another Unknown, this second one showing a CD icon.




19: I'm going to Left Click on the + sign next to the CD-icon Unknown.

This now shows several OCRemix tracks that Amarok was not able to parse into albums. While I know where these files are stored and how they should be listed, Amarok does not.




Now that we have built our collection, we'll take a quick look at the File view, then move onto Media Devices, then visualizations after that.

Accessing a Media Player - Part 2

Using a Media player and visualizations - Part 3