Apps

Kirocker Music Display

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Score 86%
Description:

Make your Kicker (the KDE main panel) rock with your music.

It is a Kicker applet that displays what you listen to in Amarok.
A full-screen display can also be used independently of the applet.

With this panel applet, you always know what you are listening to, and can watch its cover and star rating: it is always visible.
It allows you to rate your music with one click: you can quickly change the number of stars of your musics from anywhere on your desktop.
Finally, it let you remotely control Amarok with one click from anywhere on your desktop: play next or previous track, pause, play, and seek to another position in the current track.

You also have the possibility to show your currently playing music in a beautiful full-screen display. Ideal for parties or to listen to music while doing something else away from the computer.
The full-screen display can be triggered independently of the panel applet. You can start it from the KMenu or from Amarok itself.

To install:
- You need to have automake 1.9 installed for the compilation to work. It should be Ok on modern Linux distributions. You also need Python for the Amarok script to work (optional). This should also be Ok.
- Extract the archive
- Open a konsole in the extracted folder (in Konqueror, go to the extracted folder and press F4)
- Run this set of command: ./configure --prefix=$(kde-config --prefix) && make && sudo make install
- It will asks your root password to install the applet on your system
- Right click the Kicker, choose "Add an Applet to the Panel..." (once the panel is unlocked)
- Double-click "Kirocker Music Display"
- Start playing a music. The applet is empty when Amarok is stopped or paused, to not annoy you with useless information when you are working
- If you do not want the panel applet, the full-screen display can be trigerred from the KMenu or from Amarok itself (restart Amarok, enable the "Kirocker Music Display" script, and then right-click the playlist to see the action to show full-screen)

Note: After an upgrade from a previous version, press Alt+F2 and type the command "kicker default restart" to restart the Panel with the new installed version.

How to make the Kicker translucent:
The Kicker translucent white vertical background is also included in the package.
- Your screen resolution need to be 1280*800. If not, you will need some artistic skills and a Gimp experience to modify the given background
- Extract the image "Kicker Right Translucent Background.png" located in the Kirocker Music Display archive
- Open your desktop background image with The Gimp
- Drag and drop "Kicker Right Translucent Background.png" to the Gimp window of your background image
- Save the image and set it as your desktop background image
- Right click the Kicker and choose "Configure the Panel..." (once the panel is unlocked)
- Place the panel on the right (click the button on the right)
- Set the size to "Personalized" and enter "96 pixels"
- In the "Appearance" tab, check "Enable transparency"
- Click "Ok" and you're done: ENJOY!
Last changelog:

11 years ago

4.0:
- Theme support with wonderful ones provided by default and a graphical editor that is both powerful and surprisingly easy to use
- Have fun karaokees with automatically-scrolling lyrics
- Added a better no-cover image, from Oxygen (sorry guys, but it's the only beautiful and scalable image I found)
- Now using the "Track, Artist, Album" order (instead of "Artist, Album, Track") to be more complient with other displays, such as iPod, Last.fm, and even Amarok.
- Changed the application icon to a better one, using an Oxygen composition. Also show the icon back in the panel big tooltip, as it cannot be confused with an empty cover image anymore
- Removed a lot of bugs
- Enhanced performances

Browse for new themes:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/search.php?search=Search&text=kirocker

Older list of changes:
http://slaout.linux62.org/kirocker/old-changelog.html

==========================

This is the End:
I think I will now return back to Windows, so i'm done with KDE development. I will perhapse help the KDE Windows project in the future, tough.
This project is now abandonned.
I'm afraid it will not be ported to KDE 4, unless new developers pop up.

Why I returned back to Windows:
http://slaout.linux62.org/Why_Windows.html

324 comments
 Comments

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gstnet

11 years ago

Great app - thank you.

One thing that I see missing is display of cover images for the Last.fm tracks.

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C

Sebien

11 years ago

That's not normal.
It should be Ok with 3.2.

Anyone to confirm/infirm this?

Make sure that after the installation, you restarted Kicker:

Press Alt+F2 and type the command "killall -sTERM kicker ; kicker"

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gstnet

11 years ago

Just to make myself clear. Cover art does work. It only does not work for tracks from Last.fm

I did restart kicker and no change.

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Sebien

11 years ago

It me who haven't been clear.
I understood you that it was not working on Last.fm radios only.

So, let's try debug it.
The applet is looking for the Last.fm cover at this place:

~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/lastfm_image.png

Does this image exist for you?
Or is it named differently?
What version of Amarok do you have?

Thanks in advance for your help to debug this.

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Sebien

11 years ago

Oh, I think I found why it's not working.

If the image exists and is well named, then the problem comes from my code.

Please open the file src/informationpoller.cpp and go to the line 270. This line is:

lastFmCover.resize(size, size);

Replace this line with those four ones:

if (size > 0) // The shadow is normally on the bottom and right.
lastFmCover.resize(size, size);
else
lastFmCover.resize(lastFmCover.width() - 6, lastFmCover.height() - 6);

Please recompile and tell me if it works (it should work!).

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gstnet

11 years ago

The image is there. I need to run out now but I will try recompiling with your fix later this evening and will report results here.

Thank you

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gstnet

11 years ago

It seems that there is something else wrong with last.fm. Now it does not seem to return proper album and artist tags any more. Other at #amarok seem to have similar problems.

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Sebien

10 years ago

I released version 3.4 with the patch included, and awesome new features, BTW ;-)

I can't reproduce your bug of bad artist/album/title. Anyway, I changed the way how Kirocker Music Display retreive those information. So the bug can has been removed in 3.4.

Please test.

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scream

11 years ago

Awesome app. One think I'd like to have changed though: The volume should be adjusted via the mouse wheel, not the song's current position. Other than that, awesome work, keep it up!

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Sebien

11 years ago

In fact, I would like to add a volume slider to the applet.
It would be hidden unless you move your mouse over the applet.

So you will be able to scroll it to change the volume, and still be able to scroll the cover to seek in the track.

And if the volume is changed by another way (global keyboard shortcut, from Amarok)... the slider would automatically show up temporarily.
This would completely eliminate the need of the Amarok OSD.

As a temporar workarround, you can scroll the Amarok system tray icon.

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scream

11 years ago

Yep, that's what I currently do (the workaround).
Though I think that scrolling with the mouse wheel should by DEFAULT change the volume, not the position in the track. This should only happen if you scroll not over the cover but over the position bar. Really, changing the position in a track is one of the things people normally never do. And if, they usually have the main interface opened anyway because they're searching through a couple of files.

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joth666

11 years ago

Great app!

Just one question...I get the album-cover art in the kicker without a problem, but is it normal that it doesn't show in the pop-up you get if you let the mouse hover over the applet? Or the number of stars you've assigned the song for that matter. In the pop-up I only get amarok's standard no-cover image albeit with a yellow star centered over it.

Not a big problem since the information is available in the kicker itself, just struck me as somewhat odd.

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Sebien

11 years ago

It's the icon of Kirocker Music Display, the applet.

I'd better remove it, since it serves no purpose and can be confusing.

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zeltak

11 years ago

hi Sebien

Amazing App, i must say i was in love with basket but now this is just awesome!
one sort Question though, is there any chance of getting lyrics in full screen? id would be awesome!

i have no programing skills what so ever but would like to contribute to the project if i can be of help (though i am also a Linux novice)

thx again

Zeltak

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Sebien

11 years ago

That's a great idea.

But I will wait version 4.0, when there will be configuration.

I would not enable this option by default since it would clutter the full screen mode.

I easily imagine an area with a vertical scrollbar, progressing automatically as the song advance, so you will not have to manually scroll.

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SaikoBee

11 years ago

When I use your applet, it forces Amarok's OSD to turn on. It would be nice to not make that happen. But moreover, I would like to be able to launch your full screen program without having the applet, because AmarokFS is crashing on me a lot and your full screen program is better. Is there a way to take the current source and make an executable that just starts the full screen mode? It would be appreciated, thanks.

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Sebien

11 years ago

I have a bad and a good news.

Bad news: for OSD, I tryed something but it was bugged (and sometimes crashed Kicker). I need a deeper change in the code to make this feature work.

Very good news: the full screen mode can be launched without the applet. In 3.2, there is a KMenu entry for it, or an Amarok script, like AmarokFS. This is all optimized, and you now have date & time in full screen mode!

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CptnObvious999

11 years ago

Kirocker 3.0 worked awesome with my Sabayon Linux KDE 3.5.6 install however when I upgraded to KDE 3.5.7 (with the Sabayon patches) the text no longer has an outline and when I mouseover the cover I no longer get those buttons to pause, fullscreen, etc. Is this an issue with Kirocker or the patches that Sabayon applies?

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Sebien

11 years ago

Please check if Sabayon Linux does not provide an older version of Kirocker Music Display.
If it is the case, then just reinstall the version 3.0 on top of the Sabayon Linux one.

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jr83

11 years ago

HI, thank you for you very good product. I just want some information, i have read the subject (may be not enough) but i have some little problem.
First, Sometime there is nothing display, i can't see anything.
second, i have a brown background hand the text is black (perfect) but with white all over the letters. I don't know if i can do anything.
to finish, I would like to know if there is a option menu, to change some little thing or not. I have nothing find

Thank you, and one more time, thank you for you program, it's brilliant..!!!

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Sebien

11 years ago

I'm afraid there is no option windows at all for now.
I try to make it "just work" and after that, for version 4.0, I will add options.

I already tryed to make the text outlining of the color of the background image, but the contrast was not as good as black or white.
Perhapse this will be configurable, or I will try something more advanced, like taking the background image dominant color, and lighten it a little if the text is black, or darken it a little if the text is white. This is an idea... It could preserve a good contrast while blending better in the background image. I have to try.

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ChubcMcGee

11 years ago

First: Great app. Definitely will stay on my panel for a long time to come.

Second: When playing a last.fm stream the song changes but the track is the same in amarok, so the applet doesn't update. It keeps the title of the song of the first song that is played through the stream. Any plans for a fix on this? If not, no big deal, it still rocks something hard.

Thanks again!

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Sebien

11 years ago

I'm happy to announce you that Kirocker Music Display 3.2 now fully supports Last.fm streams: it displays cover, title, artist... and all of them are changed on new tracks.

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5er

11 years ago

The archive is broken :(

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5er

11 years ago

The source

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11 years ago

4.0:
- Theme support with wonderful ones provided by default and a graphical editor that is both powerful and surprisingly easy to use
- Have fun karaokees with automatically-scrolling lyrics
- Added a better no-cover image, from Oxygen (sorry guys, but it's the only beautiful and scalable image I found)
- Now using the "Track, Artist, Album" order (instead of "Artist, Album, Track") to be more complient with other displays, such as iPod, Last.fm, and even Amarok.
- Changed the application icon to a better one, using an Oxygen composition. Also show the icon back in the panel big tooltip, as it cannot be confused with an empty cover image anymore
- Removed a lot of bugs
- Enhanced performances

Browse for new themes:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/search.php?search=Search&text=kirocker

Older list of changes:
http://slaout.linux62.org/kirocker/old-changelog.html

==========================

This is the End:
I think I will now return back to Windows, so i'm done with KDE development. I will perhapse help the KDE Windows project in the future, tough.
This project is now abandonned.
I'm afraid it will not be ported to KDE 4, unless new developers pop up.

Why I returned back to Windows:
http://slaout.linux62.org/Why_Windows.html

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4.0 (the end)
updated Dec 14 2007
added Feb 07 2007
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