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  Savanna Says: Perspective on JuK
Savanna Says Posted by Navindra Umanee on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @14:14
from the blonde-perspective dept.
In this entertaining review, Savanna takes us through her discovery of JuK, a new pearl in the treasure trove of KDE applications. Expect to see JuK ship with KDE 3.2 since it has already made an appearance in the KDE Multimedia module. Kudos to Savanna for taking the time to contribute the review and, of course, hats off to the developers of JuK!


A User's Perspective on JuK

by Savanna

"Juk? What the heck is that?"
"You really should try it."
"But I use XMMS. I love XMMS."
"Well, give it a try. It's sort of like iTunes - a very nice playlist editor."
"Okay, okay...I'll try it out."

And so I did.

That is approximately how the conversation went a few weeks back on the #debian-KDE IRC channel. A person there named "grepper" told me to try it. Grepper knew one thing: I like pretty things. In fact, that is why I like KDE and have since around a year.

I first experienced it when I got a copy of Debian installed on my backup machine. From there, I booted up KDE and started to play around. In about ten seconds flat, I had one of the nicest looking desktops I had ever seen, and I was hooked.

I'm a user, not a programmer. I don't know what makes most things tick in Linux and KDE, nor do I really want to. Only recently, I learned how to upgrade to the latest CVS packages and install an Nvidia driver Debian package without seeing anything but a console line - and without freaking out because I couldn't see a mouse cursor.

Okay, I admit it: I'm a blonde who isn't a techie. I'm learning because it is kind of fun, but I'll only go so far. I know most people who will read this will probably chuckle because this is for a techie site, but it is worth noting that I am a user who has switched her desktop from Microsoft to Linux with KDE. That is a pretty big jump.

So when Grepper talked about my switching from XMMS (comfortingly like a windows application) to Juk (something like a Mac application with lovely KDE tidbits - from my point of view), he knew that I would do so reluctantly.

What a surprise!

Juk is easy. Juk is elegant. Juk is simple.

Juk is awesome.

It opens up as a simple collection list with a space for icons in the left to make more custom playlists with. Nice big icons at the top make it very hard to miss the start/stop/skip functionality of the program. It looks friendly, and it is. Big columns on the right tell you everything you need to know. A search function at the top lets you instantly select things live from the collection list to make your playlist the way you want. A nice little icon in the tray on the Kicker lets you control the application from there as well. You right-click on the left area, create new playlist, name it, and then drag-and-drop from your collection list to your playlist.

You don't need to do anything else: it is that simple.

Every time it opens, it scans your MP3/OGG/Music directories (which you add very easily whenever you like) for any new music files. Alternate light gray and white rows make spotting songs a breeze. A "jump to currently playing song" button on the bottom right makes it really easy to go to where you are, even while you are building more playlists and listening to another. A pop-up track announcement from the Kicker tray with a forward and backward skip button on either side comes up (if you want it) at the change of every song. I find this particularly useful. Right-click on the Kicker tray icon and you get a selection of the standard music player functions. Click on it with the left mouse button, and the entire program pops up. Another click minimizes it once more. There are no flashy player skins from outer space, or separate player displays. This is a simple program which doesn't need many bells or whistles.

Everything is big and friendly.

Big friendly icons make for happy users.

I was hooked. In fact, I was so hooked that after I got the stable version from orth's CVS debs, I switched everything to Juk and no longer use XMMS. Now, I do miss the XMMS skins, and I had quite a collection, I'll tell you. And I miss the plugins feature for falling asleep and waking up with music - but wheels assures me that this is going to be coded in relatively soon so I'm no longer worried about that.

Other than that, it is a dream come true. There is something to be said for a Mac-design where things are supposed to be friendly and simple for regular users. Juk hits that on the head. I love XMMS but it was sort of tiny on my screen and making a good set of playlists accessible was, at times, kind of annoying. I also like Noatun, but I have some issues with it at the moment - though with the Hayes playlist feature, it was as close to Juk and about as friendly and intuitive as I've ever seen it before (and does have its own very nice merits).

But Juk is...perfect. Well, so far. It screams: "non-coders will use me happily", and that is a good thing.

I love KDE because it is easy to use. Juk follows that example and reminds me, once again, why I run KDE in the first place.

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Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.
Nice review
by lit on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @15:00
I've seen a lot more people switch to music players that aren't winamp clones (xmms), recently. The move from winamp/xmms/audion, to itunes/juk/rythybox is great-- the former is way harder to use than the later. I think most people still use xmms because they are simply used to it and winamp.
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Hayes Playlist
by Shift on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @15:11
I just want to say that I am using noatun with Hayes playlist for about one year now. I want to thank the authors for their work :)

And now I am trying Juk but it doesn't have the same advantage / disadvantage of Hayes. I will stay with noatun and Hayes for now but thank you to the Juk author too/
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juk versus hayes
by ik on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @15:12
i tried both noatun+hayes and juk, and i still prefer hayes (altough juk is nice) (http://www.freekde.org/neil/hayes/hayes.png), but that is probably a matter of taste. I really like the filesystem-based concept of hayes..

juk also has some problems that need to be sorted out: 'add directory' takes a loong time here (it takes more than a minute, xmms loads the same directory in a couple of seconds). xmms only loads id3 tags when they are shown, maybe that has something to do with it (but i don't think its the only reason). but kde3.2 is not released yet offcourse
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iTunes interface is patented
by Jonathan Riddell on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @17:45
Worth noting that the iTunes interface is patented.

http://jriddell.org/patents.html iTunes patent details linked from that page.

Like all software patents the problem is probably best ignored until/unless they come after you.
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no luck for me.
by nachiketa sahoo on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @21:35
I bumped into Juk yesterday when I was trying to get a decent playlist manager. Compiled and installed it. It searched and added the files to the playlist, but when I clicked on the songs, KDE gave error. I don't know what is the problem with it. It did not even form album lists. :(
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me too
by spooq on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @22:39
Just a "meeeee toooooo", but Juk is so much better than anything else on Linux for messy people like me who have songs spread about everywhere, not just in nice neat file hierachies. Id rather just throw the files at Juk and let it sort things out for me. "Search All Visible" is simply brilliant, I dont even have to think to get the songs I want, I just type whatever comes into my head first. Forget skins, they would only get in the way.
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UI doubleclick??
by Thorsten Schnebeck on Thursday 12/Jun/2003, @23:56
I notices that juk uses doubleclick to play a file - I thought KDE is per default single click?

So, what about

point: single select
point&drag: multi-select
shift/ctrl+click: multi-select
click: play

So far juk looks nice!

Bye

Thorsten
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What I like about KDE...
by rom1 on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @01:01
... is how easy it is to connect to various parts. Start Juk, open your favorite terminal, and type:

"dcop juk Player"
You get a nice list of available controls.

"dcop juk Player play" starts playback, and so on... It makes scripting a breeze. DCOP rules ! :)
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GStreamer?
by Mike Hearn on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @02:52
I don't really understand how it can "output" to both aRts and GStreamer. They are multimedia frameworks both, they do the whole thing apart from the user interface.

So, how does it use both?
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A User's Perspective on JuK
by AC on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @03:02
If my "User's Perspective on JuK" is negative and I reflect why in this topic, will my post be removed?

If the answer is no, why was my negative perspective removed? Last time I checked, I was not a trolling.
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Go Juk
by Sean on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @03:52
I discovered Juk recently as well, it's a great app and simple to use. A big thanks to the authors. Can't wait for the lastest version in KDE 3.2.
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Noatun remains the undefeated champion...
by Mystilleef on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @04:37
I tried Juk today, but my experience with it wasn't potent enough to warrant a change from Noatun. I've never really been a mouse and click person, so perhaps Juk isn't for me to begin with. I've grown accustomed Noatun's 'global' keyboard combinations, skins and inumerable plugins(hayes playlist inclusive). Juk is great, but Noatun is better. And Xmms is just old.

But for Noatun and aRts control, kde multimedia is an embarrasment, an abomination and an abberations. I hope exciting changes are been made to Noatun for KDE-3.2 because I don't yet find Juk as worthy replacement. I also hope (K)mplayer becomes KDE's default media player. It will be interesting to integrate Noatun, Kscd and K(m)player into a single application.

Otherwise, kde multimedia is just a joke. Are there any exciting features we can look forward to in KDE-3.2, with regards to kde multimedia? A thumbs up to both the Noatun and Juk team. To the kde multimedia team; we support you but we are yet to see the best from you guys.

Regards,

Mystilleef
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A note about the CVS version
by Scott Wheeler on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @05:12
Just to be clear -- a lot of people are trying the CVS version and coming away saying, "Hey, this isn't stable at all. This isn't release quality."

Simply put, you're right. It's not. That's why it hasn't been released. JuK has been under heavy development for the last several months -- there have been thousands of lines of changes and additions to JuK's code since 1.1. There are crashes and bugs that I am well aware of and will get to before the next release with KDE 3.2, which is many months away.

That said, if you're using the stable version - 1.1 and still experiencing problems, *please* report them. JuK 1.1 has very few known bugs; If more are reported I'll backport my fixes and release a 1.2.

HEAD is where a lot of the cool things happen, but at this point in the release cycle (several months before we even hit the feature freeze) things will be broken on a regular basis; this is just the nature of software development.
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FLAC support?
by Jim Dabell on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @05:33
I haven't noticed it in any of the feature lists, but a requirement for any media player for me is the ability to play FLAC files. I'm sure other people have other formats they want to play - does juk have input plugins?
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Arts
by Aurélien Gâteau on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @07:13
I would love to use Juk, or any arts based player. If it wasn't for the sound click when I either:
- start a compile.
- switch virtual screen.
- in fact, do anything other than staring at the player window (yes, this is a troll)

My box is quite decent (1.2Ghz 256Mhz) and XMMS plays audio without any problem. I have tried to increase the arts buffer, but it didn't work. Any interesting settings someone want to share?

One day, I'll try Juk with gstreamer :-)
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Aaarrrhhh! My eyes!
by Psiren on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @08:33
What the hell is wrong with that site designer?! I'll be seeing green stripes for weeks. Oh the pain...
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Anyone tried both Juk and Yammi?
by onoelle on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @13:59
As the developer of Yammi (http://yammi.sourceforge.net) I really would like to try Juk, but that won't be before I update my whole system to a current distro (Juk doesn't compile on my current configuration).

Anyone tried both applications? I think their concept is very similar, but I myself think that Juk is much better integrated into KDE (as Yammi, so far, also runs on a QT-only system). But maybe there are some good pieces in Yammi that could find their way into Juk (eg. the fuzzy search)? That's why I would like to hear the opinion of people who tried both...
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Almost perfect.
by Steve B. on Friday 13/Jun/2003, @18:41
I am very happy with JuK, having just emerged it on Gentoo. It's much more useful than Noatun and SplitPlayList

There's one set of UI changes I'd like to see: when viewing the collection list, arrange the songs in a tree format, maybe by Artist, Album, Genre, and maybe Year. The exact heirarchy and tree depth should be user-selectable; I would prefer to sort by Artist alone, but other people might prefer something else. In most cases I can't imagine the tree getting more than 3 levels deep...you'd need a boatload of songs to make that really useful.

My reasoning is thus: a large song collection is rather cumbersome to navigate in a flat list. A collapsible tree would give users the option to collapse Artists/Genres/etc that they are not interested in. Also, it would enable users to add a large number of songs to a playlist by dragging that level of the tree to a playlist. Besides, when you're looking for a song to play, don't you do it by classes? I usually remember either the artist or genre before I can remeber the name of the song I'm looking for.

Please note that I would _only_ apply this change to the collection view, not when viewing a playlist. Playlists are by nature sequential, and they should be displayed that way. The existing UI is excellent for that.
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Queue
by Ryan on Friday 30/Jan/2004, @12:04
I'd really like to see a enqueue/dequeue for while songs are being played. I frequently play a shuffle of a playlist or all my songs, and while it's being played, I think of a song that I want to hear. In the new xmms, I can just press "q" on my keyboard and it will play that song next, and then go back to the shuffle. I'd like to see this function in juk.
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mp4/aac/m4a support
by Nicholas Fellows on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @08:23
I've been using Juk for a while now, its taken over pretty much from XMMS as my defacto player. Most of my files are in mp3 format (this is in forsight of buying a hard disk based player, maybe even an iPod if i can afford one!) I have recently come into ownership of a substantial quantity of mp4/m4a files which dissappointingly juk doesnt like to play.

I was going to have a look at the source code for juk and see if there was any way I could implement this but i dont really know where to start.

I have discovered a couple of tools which enable me to play mp4 / m4a / aac files under linux (XMMS being one of them) i discovered a really useful tool which enables me to convert to wav file its called
<A href="http://www.audiocoding.com/download.php">"faad"</A> http://www.audiocoding.com I think mplayer uses it! (unfortunately juk wont play wav's either and recompressing into another lossy format is not a route i wish to travel)

faad also allows the file to be output to stdio, this means it should be a really trivial job to get mp4 working in juk! Please , Please Please implement this feature , or at least give some clues to a clueless person how i might go about adding it myself using these tools; (who hasnt even considered the implications of tag editing!)

nick ...
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