Nerrivik - Beta 1 of Amarok 2.0 released!

The Amarok team is proud to announce the first beta version of Amarok 2, codenamed Nerrivik, released after days of hard work during this year's Akademy in Belgium. It contains a considerable amount of improvements over the previous alpha versions, bringing Amarok one step closer to the 2.0 release.

Thanks again for sending bug reports, patches and giving feedback. Amarok's development is heading towards 2.0 with an incredible rate, let's keep it that way!

Please be aware that the database scheme changed since alpha 2 and you will need to delete collection.db in Amarok's settings folder (often in ~/.kde4/share/apps/amarok or ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok) if you have used any previous version of Amarok 2.

The highlights of this first beta version are the scripting interface, AFT, new artwork and of course many bugfixes. The scripting interface has matured and script authors are encouraged to explore the new possibilities QtScript offers. The scripting interface might still change but those changes will be minor. Amarok File Tracking (AFT) helps you keep your playcounts, ratings and a lot more file related information that Amarok keeps in its database, even if you move files around in your file system. It has now been brought back to Amarok 2 and will be improved even more in future releases. To find out more about AFT you can read Jeff Mitchell's blogentry about it. The interface was improved a lot by new artwork provided by Nuno Pinheiro and a new splash screen by Wade Olson.

Some of the changes since alpha 2:

Features

• Inline editing of tracks in the Collection is now possible.
• Album moves can be undone
• Grouped albums can be moved in the playlist by draggin the album header
• Track moves in the playlist can now be undone
• Gapless playback.
• New "fuzzy" bias type, which matches values loosely.
• Collection Setup automatically expands to show selected directories. (BR 123637)
• Tag editing and file deletion for MTP devices
• Add toolbox to context view
• Allow selecting multiple playlist items.
• Implement "Move to collection" functionality in file browser.
• Saving/loading of biased playlists.
• Improved script console
• Set items in directory selector to partially checked when relevant. patch by Sebastian Trueg
• Album is now added to the playlist when clicked in Albums applet.
• Trigger play/pause when middle-clicking systray icon. (BR 167162)
• New start flag --multipleinstances allows to run multiple instances of Amarok.
• Full cover support for Nepomuk collection
• Search local collection for albums to show in the album applet when playing non local content
• Context view state is saved on exit and restored on start up.
• New functions available to the scripting interface, under Amarok.Info.

Changes

• New filename scheme widget in the Organize Collection dialog.
• New laylout of the main toolbar using the new graphics.
• Greatly reduced memory usage when using dynamic playlists.
• Reworked layout and more intuitive interface in the Guess Tags from Filenames dialog.
• New artwork by Nuno Pinheiro and Wade Olson
• Better zooming animation in the context view
• Better usage of the available space in the context view.
• Show url in the playlist if track has no name. patch by Edward Hades (BR 167171)

Bugfixes

• Fix crash when dragging media from an external source (or the file browser) to the playlist (BR 169035)
• Fix crash when opening the setting dialog (BR 169215)
• Many fixes to the behavior of the playlist when dragging things around.
• Don't pop up multiple cover search dialogs when cancelling search in the Cover Manager (BR 167462)
• Amarok would not respect the user's changes in the cover search dialog.
• Amarok would submit tracks to lastfm reguardless of whether the user chose to enable scrobbling.
• OSD translucency works now. (BR 166567)
• Use name based sorting of tracks without a track number (fixes sorting in shoutcast and cool streams services)
• Don't try to scan the whole $HOME on first startup.
• Don't pop up the OSD after changing Amarok settings. (BR: 168197)
• Fix crash when exiting while collection scan was running. (BR 167872)
• Automatically re-authenticate connection if the Ampache server has logged us out. (BR 166958)
• Status bar now allows shrinking main window beyond it's width and does not enlarge main window by itself. Patch by Daniel Molkentin (BR 166832)
• Submit tracks to Last.fm also when playing Last.fm Radio. (BR 164156)
• Check if the file is writable before allowing the tags to be edited in SqlMeta. ( BR 122797 )
• Properly insert items dragged from the collection view. (BR: 166609)
• Don't remove all the tracks in the group when removing the first. (BR: 167251)
• Only increment playcount if we've played more than half of the song. (BR 121587)
• Added protection against endless looping when a playlist contains only unplayable tracks.
• Missing default playlist does not produce error message now. (BR 167385)
• Fixed playlist bias drop-down box showing multiple empty and duplicate entries. (BR 167153)
• Fixed the "Toggle Main Window" shortcut. (BR 167218)
• Script manager now could stop scripts which use qt bindings.
• Fix crash when calling GetCaps from the DBus Player interface
• Update album applet on track change. (BR 167256)

Packages are available through your package manager for most Linux distributions and trough the KDE-on-Windows installer on Windows.

If you want to help us get Amarok 2.0 ready for final release drop by in #amarok or #rokymotion on freenode. We will appreciate any kind of help from translating, documentation writing through writing code and promoting.

Enjoy beta 1 and watch as the wolf is growing :-)
The Amarok 2 FAQ addresses some of the questions you might have about Amarok 2.

Original here