While setting up my Amarok to play from my music collection I came across a post in which the question was asked if it were possible to play from one’s collection while excluding .flac files. I am going to answer that question, in the affirmative, for all file types. Additionally I am going to show how using the advanced filter set in the built in search tool within Amarok one can really narrowly define what gets chosen out of one’s own collection.
So, I am going to assume that you have Amarok up and running and that you have organized your collection and that Amarok is displaying your collection. If you haven’t made it this far, bookmark this article and come back later.
In Amarok there is a search field and to the right of that search field is a button marked with an ellipse (them’s three periods: …).
If you click on the ellipse button it will bring up an Edit Filter dialog:
You may be tempted to select the Exclude radio button (lower left) and then change the Attribute: dropdown from Simple Search to Type. (If you change the dropdown first, the rest of the dialog greys out and you won’t be able to select Exclude.) This will for some reason fail. Instead actually select to search by flac (or whatever you wish to later exclude). In this condition, Amarok is set to search according to file type. Now you just have to enter flac (no dot) in the search field (to the right of the Attribute: dropdown) and you’re all set.
Once you have made these changes you can click OK to close the dialog. Now Amarok will search for all your flac files. To change this to an exclusion, merely place a negative sign (–) in front of the phrase type:”flac” creating instead -type:”flac”.
As you can see, this method can be used for any support file type. Just enter the extension you wish you filter by or exclude and if it’s for exclusion use the negative sign (–).
Once you have your search results displayed (and this could take a moment with a large collection) you can then add those results to a playlist. Not strictly necessary especially since running the search is fairly simple and it would be constantly in sync with your currently loaded collection.
Have fun with that and happy hunting.
Thanks, but this describes amarok 1.4
– there is not type: recognition in amarok 2.0!?
That is disheartening news. Why would they remove such a useful feature?
Have you tested this using Magellan (2.0.1.1)? It seems they have added some removed features back in after 2.0 for this latest iteration.
Yes, I’m afraid, this most useful feature is still missing in 2.0.1.1 (debian experimental). I hope that it will soon reappear, and it would help if users could (nicely) comment on this to the developers.
In fact, I would like the collection browser to be more flexible and allow more choices than Artist, Album, Genre and Composer (for example, filetype), any tag in fact. In reality, a 4th level tree would also be useful. My tree would be Type/Genre/Artist/Album (or better yet: Type/Genre/Composer or Artist/Album).
I do hope they bring back the search functionality. It is much preferred.
However, if you are using a folder hierarchy to divide your flacs and your mp3s, then just use that to divise a new playlist.
Instead of clicking on Collection or Playlists in the left tab, click on Files. Navigate to the portion of your folder hierarchy where you are able to select by file type (for instance: Music > Collection > Flac). Right-click on the folder of the type you wish and choose “Load” from the menu which comes up.
This will load all of the items under that Flac level. Very easy to do. Then you could use that to create a new playlist.
I see no reasont to expand the basic track-minus-two folder hierarchy scheme (Artist/Album/track). These other items would be much better handled in the form of tags (though I would like to see tags expanded to include information such as author/composer, conductor, soloist(s), or DJ/mixer to better accomodate non-pop recordings such as classical and recorded poetry.