--autostart not starting the conversion automatically

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão]

I want to start the conversion of sound files to mp3 from a bash script, so I created a profile named 'mp3', and tried to run soundkonverter from the command line with:

soundkonverter --profile mp3 --autostart *.flac

Here's the directory where I ran the command from:

paulo@monk:~/stage/edit/CoplanTowner-song_flac/MARC COPLAND & RALPH TOWNER - Song Without End (1994).flac$ ls
01 - Nardis.flac 03 - Tern.flac 05 - Freebop.flac 07 - Jamaica stopover.flac 09 - Blue in green.flac scans
02 - Zingaro.flac 04 - Goodbye.flac 06 - All that's left.flac 08 - Snowfall.flac 10 - Love walked in.flac

soundkonverter gets stuck in the profile selection screen (see attached file 'Finished - soundKonverter_001.jpg'), and the conversion is not automatically started.

Here's my ~/.kde/share/apps/soundkonverter/profiles.xml:

<!DOCTYPE soundkonverter_profilelist>
<soundkonverter type="profilelist">
 <conversionOptions profile="User defined" profileName="mp3" pluginName="lame" codecName="mp3">
  <encodingOptions qualityMode="0" bitrate="160" compressionLevel="2" bitrateMode="0" quality="5" cmdArguments="--id3v2-only">
   <data presetFast="0" presetBitrate="192" presetBitrateCbr="0" preset="2"/>
  </encodingOptions>
  <outputOptions outputFilesystem="" outputDirectoryMode="1" outputDirectory=""/>
  <features replaygain="0"/>
 </conversionOptions>
 <conversionOptions profile="User defined" profileName="soundkonverter_last_used" pluginName="lame" codecName="mp3">
  <encodingOptions qualityMode="0" bitrate="160" compressionLevel="2" bitrateMode="0" quality="5" cmdArguments="--id3v2-only">
   <data presetFast="0" presetBitrate="192" presetBitrateCbr="0" preset="2"/>
  </encodingOptions>
  <outputOptions outputFilesystem="" outputDirectoryMode="1" outputDirectory=""/>
  <features replaygain="0"/>
 </conversionOptions>
</soundkonverter>

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: soundkonverter 2.1.1-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-33.44-generic 3.16.7-ckt7
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-33-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Thu Apr 2 11:36:56 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-11-25 (128 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - Release amd64 (20141022.1)
SourcePackage: soundkonverter
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão (marcelpaulo)]

Reading bug #688986, which dealt with the same problem I'm facing, but which was closed as 'Invalid', I tried another experiment:

1. Created profile 'mp3 extreme' (excerpt from ~/.kde/share/apps/soundkonverter/profiles.xml):

<conversionOptions profile="User defined" profileName="mp3 extreme" pluginName="lame" codecName="mp3">
  <encodingOptions qualityMode="0" bitrate="160" compressionLevel="2" bitrateMode="0" quality="5" cmdArguments="--id3v2-only">
  <data presetFast="0" presetBitrate="192" presetBitrateCbr="0" preset="2"/>
  </encodingOptions>
  <outputOptions outputFilesystem="" outputDirectoryMode="1" outputDirectory=""/>
  <features replaygain="0"/>
 </conversionOptions>

2. Run soundkonverter from the command line, specifying --profile, --format and --output, even though it didn't make sense to me having to specify --format and --output since the profile already has this information:

paulo@monk:~/stage/bin$ soundkonverter --profile 'mp3 extreme' --format mp3 --output ~/stage/edit/ --autostart ~/stage/edit/CoplanTowner-song_flac/MARC\ COPLAND\ \&\ RALPH\ TOWNER\ -\ Song\ Without\ End\ \(1994\).flac/*.flac

The results couldn't be weirder: the conversion was done automatically as expected, but the files were converted to ogg, even though both --profile and --format specify mp3.

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão (marcelpaulo)]

Tried yet another experiment, specify only --profile and --output, like this:

soundkonverter --profile 'mp3 extreme' --output ~/stage/edit/ --autostart ~/stage/edit/CoplanTowner-song_flac/MARC\ COPLAND\ \&\ RALPH\ TOWNER\ -\ Song\ Without\ End\ \(1994\).flac/*.flac

This time, the conversion was done automatically, to mp3 as dictated by the profile.

So --autostart may work, but it shouldn't be necessary to specify --output since the profile already contains that information: specifying --output after specifying --profile is redundant.

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão (marcelpaulo)]

There's a bigger disadvantage of redundantly specifying the --output directory: one loses the flexibility of using 'Same as source' output directory, as specified in the profile, which is extremely useful when converting, for instance, multiple albums, each album in a separate directory: specifying --output would bundle all converted files to a single directory, mixing files from different albums.

[Daniel Faust (hessijames)]

You are right, the --output parameter shouldn't be necessary. I already changed the code but introduced a crash, so give me some more time and I'll fix it.

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão (marcelpaulo)]

Hey, great to know, Daniel, thank you so much.

Let me say: soundkonverter is hands down the best sound converter on Linux. I have been using it for more than 10 years !

[Daniel Faust (hessijames)]

Thanks.
I committed a patch to https://github.com/HessiJames/soundkonverter
I haven't tested it much yet, but it should work fine.

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão (marcelpaulo)]

Hey, that was quick !

A confession: I have never built software from source, but I'll give it a try and test your patched version. Thanks a lot, Daniel !

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragão (marcelpaulo)]

Working flawlessly, Daniel, great, thanks a lot for your swift patch ! It works from the console with --autostart and also interactively from Xfce.

Just for the record, these were the prerequisite packages that had to be installed on Xubuntu 14.10:

kde-developer-sdk
libcdparanoia-dev
libkcddb-dev
libtagc0-dev

The build spitted some warnings, I collected them in a file and attached it here.

Are you gonna package a new version into your openSUSE repository ?

I suppose this bug can now be closed, right ?