FOSSwire

Apologies for the FOSSwire radio silence recently. I've been really really busy with university stuff. My Christmas break starts next week, so with any luck FOSSwire should get some more content over the festive period. Thanks for bearing with us!

The Amarok team have officially unveiled the 2.0 release of the popular open source music and media player application.

The world of digital music management has changed a great deal since the birth of Amarok four and a half years ago. Amarok 1 established a reputation for innovation, but maintaining development with the old framework became more difficult as Amarok grew, often in directions we never imagined.

Some of the things this new release brings to the table include:

• New user interface
• Integration with many online music services (Last.fm, Magnatune and others)
• New scripting API

Crucially, Amarok 2.0 is built against KDE 4, rather than KDE 3, making it an ideal music player for KDE 4-based desktops as it now runs natively.

There are also Beta versions of this 2.0 release available for other platforms as well - with Windows and Mac OS X versions available. The use of the Qt library underneath KDE means that the versions for these other systems integrate well (for example, Amarok 2.0 uses global menu bar when run under Mac OS X - so it 'feels like' any other Mac app).

I haven't yet had a chance to play with the new release, but you can read further release notes and download the 2.0 version from the Amarok site.

Gnac is a simple program for GNOME that allows you to convert audio files from one format to another.

It is built atop of the Gstreamer media framework, meaning that you can import any files that Gstreamer is capable of playing and then output to Gnac's supported formats for the conversion.

Once you've installed the program, it appears under the Sound & Video category, where you can launch it.

The interface is extremely simple. Use the Add button, or drag in a set of input files that you want to convert. Then select the output format from the list box at the bottom. Once you've done that, press the Convert button.

The default export options allow you to convert to Ogg/Theora and FLAC as well as WAV and Speex. While the number of export formats built in by default is nowhere near as high as with some programs, particularly those based upon ffmpeg, keeping just a few formats does keep the application simple.

For those people familiar with Gstreamer, it is possible to add to that list and add a new 'audio profile' with custom settings, so you are not strictly limited to those audio export formats.

Despite that limitation, Gnac is an effortlessly simple program with a great interface and could come in extremely handy if you're trying to batch convert a music collection to FLAC or Theora, for example.

The ability to drag a whole load of files in, choose the format and click Convert and then just leave it doing its work makes it perfect for batch jobs.

Gnac 0.1.1 has recently been released, packages for your distribution along with source code to build yourself can be downloaded from here.

Getting music from a CD (that you own, of course) to your favourite media player, such as Amarok, isn't always a clear process under KDE.

Amarok itself doesn't have the facility to rip CDs, as with many other media players, so using an external program is sometimes the only option. KAudioCreator is one such ripping program.

To install, you should be able to search for it in your package manager. While you're there, you might also want to snag flac, libvorbis and/or lame for encoding into FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 respectively.

Pop in an audio disc, and load up KAudioCreator.

If this is the first time, you've used the program, you'll need to first head into the configuration and set up an encoder. You'll be reminded of this through a dialogue box.

Go to Settings > Configure KAudioCreator.

Under the Encoder tab, you'll want to pick which format you want your CD extracted to (make sure you've installed the right packages for your chosen encoder). Pick the one you want.

While you're here, you might want to also choose the output folder for ripped tracks, under Encoded File Location. I've chosen to set a prefix of ~/Music.

Now you can get started ripping. The interface is a little... erm, unique, and takes some getting used to.

To simply rip all the tracks on the disc, choose Select All Tracks at the bottom of the interface, and then click the Gear icon in the toolbar to get started. Then check out the Jobs tab to watch the status of the rip and encode.

To rip only selected tracks, instead of choosing Select All Tracks, click each track individually to place a tick mark next to its name.

That's it! Once the rip is complete, you'll have a set of files.