Banshee » Banshee 1.5.4

Release Date: February 24, 2010
Source Tarball: banshee-1-1.5.4.tar.bz2
Release Information: NEWS, sha256sum

Banshee 1.5.4 is a beta release, with several new features and lots of bug fixes, with contributions from 15 people.

New Features

Opt-In Usage Data Collection

Under Preferences, you can choose to “Improve Banshee by sending anonymous usage data” back to the Banshee developers. This collects information on what version you’re running, what OS, library size, slow SQL queries, and a whitelisted subset of your preferences. This information will help us choose better defaults and see what parts of Banshee are used most and can be improved. All collected data is anonymous!

Default Equalizer Presets

Banshee now ships with several equalizer presets, and the core of the equalizer management has seen much internal improvement.

Banshee Community Extensions

A new sub-project named Banshee Community Extensions has been created. Its code is hosted on Gitorious, and its bugs tracked alongside Banshee’s. It already contains 9 extensions, including Alarm Clock, Lyrics, and Mirage, and has 15 maintainers. Its releases track Banshee’s.

Extensible Shuffle Modes

screenshot showing shuffle by similar playback option

Extensions can now add new shuffle modes and PlayQueue fill-by modes. The Mirage extension is the first to take advantage of this, adding a Shuffle/Fill-by Similar mode based on acoustical analysis.

screenshot showing Play Queue Auto DJ fill by similar option

Other Enhancements

Wikipedia context pane extension enabled by default
Add support for Nokia N900 phones
Add tooltip to playback error column
On close Internet Archive item, return to Search
Notify user if trying to sync missing file to DAP
Popup explanation of manual playlist ordering when appropriate
Simplify the default set of columns in Podcasts
Enable ‘Delete From Drive’ action in File System Queue
Make debuggable from within MonoDevelop
Coverart for unicode artist/albums now supported
Dropped glade-sharp dep; GNOME 3.0 ready
Add columns showing track sample rate and bits per sample
Option to sort an artist’s albums by year, not title
If starting Banshee hidden (–hide), up to half a second of startup time is saved; this is particularly useful in Moblin

Notable Bug Fixes

40 bugs were fixed since 1.5.3!

Fixes to GIO backend
Many crash/startup fixes for OS X build
Strange input bug on OS X fixed - you can now type/search as expected
Enable LibraryWatcher only for Music and Video libraries
Do better job preserving IsCompilation metadata
Store some PlayQueue settings in the db (not GConf)
Update to Last.fm’s API change for scrobbling/recs
Bring back static FileNamePattern API used by some scripts
Fix several memory leaks

Banshee has a lot more to offer! Check out the previous major release notes…

Dependencies

Mono 1.9.1 (.NET 2.0 Profile / gmcs)
SQlite 3.4
Gtk# 2.12
GStreamer 0.10.13
NDesk DBus (ndesk-dbus) 0.5
NDesk DBus GLib (ndesk-dbus-glib) 0.3
Mono.Addins (mono-addins) 0.3.1
TagLib# (taglib-sharp) >= 2.0.3.5
Required to build default feature stack:
- libmtp >= 0.2.0
- ipod-sharp >= 0.8.5
- mono-zeroconf >= 0.8.0
- boo >= 0.8.1
Run-time requirements for default feature stack:
- podsleuth >= 0.6.6
- brasero
- avahi

Community

Contributors For This Release

The following people directly contributed to the release of this version of Banshee. Without their help, there would be no release!

Aaron Bockover, Alan McGovern, Alexander Kojevnikov, Anders Petersson, Andreas Nilsson, AndrÃ©s G. Aragoneses, Bertrand Lorentz, Chow Loong Jin, Christopher Halse Rogers, Gabriel Burt, Jakub Steiner, K. Vishnoo Charan Reddy, Pavel Antonov, Romain TartiÃ¨re, Sandy Armstrong

The following people contributed updated translations to this release. Without them, our project’s reach would be much more limited.

Andrej Å½nidarÅ¡iÄ, AntÃ³nio Lima, Benjamin Valero Espinosa, Gabor Kelemen, Okano Takayoshi, Petr Kovar, Kentaro Kazuhama, Å½ygimantas BeruÄka

Contributors In Past Releases

Aaron Bockover, Alan McGovern, Alex Bennee, Alex Kloss, Alex Launi, Alexander Hixon, Alexander Kojevnikov, Alexandros Frantzis, Alp Toker, Anders Petersson, Andrea Cimitan, Andreas Neustifter, Andreas Nilsson, Andrew Conkling, AndrÃ©s G. Aragoneses, Andy Midgette, Arthur Carli, Aydemir UlaÅŸ Åžahin, Ben Maurer, BenjamÃn Valero Espinosa, Bertrand Lorentz, Bertrand Lorentz, Bill Dawson, Bob Copeland, Bojan Rajkovic, Brad Taylor, Brandon Perry, Brian Lucas, Brian Nickel, Brian Teague, Chow Loong Jin, Chris Howie, Chris Jones, Chris Lahey, Chris Toshok, Chris Turchin, Christian Krause, Christoph Burgdorf, Christopher James Halse Rogers, Cody Russell, Cosmin Banu, Dan Wilson, Dan Winship, Daniel Munkton, Daniel Siegel, David Spreen, David Stone, Diego E. PettenÃ², Eitan Isaacson, Elena Grassi, Eoin Hennessy, Eric Butler, Erik Schmidt, Fabian Jost, Felipe Almeida Lessa, Florent Thoumie, Fredrik Hedberg, FÃ©lix Velasco, Gabriel Burt, Garrett LeSage, GÃ¶tz Waschk, Haitao Feng, Hans Petter Jansson, Iain Lane, Igor Guerrero Fonseca, Ilya Konstantinov, Ivan N. Zlatev, Jack Deslippe, Jakub Steiner, James Willcox, Jan Arne Petersen, Jason Conti, Jason Taylor, Jeff Tickle, Jeff Wheeler, Jensen Somers, Jo Shields, Johannes Kuhn, John Millikin, Jorge Castro, Juri Pakaste, JÃ©rÃ©mie Laval, K. Vishnoo Charan Reddy, Ken Vandine, Larry Ewing, Lauri Kotilainen, Lukas Lipka, Matt Enright, Michael Kaiser, Michael Martin-Smucker, Michael Monreal, Michael Monreal, Miguel de Icaza, Mike Urbanski, Moritz SchallabÃ¶ck, Nathan Palmer, Neil Loknath, Nicholas Doyle, Nicholas Parker, NicolÃ² Chieffo, Nils Naumann, Oben Sonne, Olivier Duff, Oscar Forero, Pacho Ramos, Patrick van Staveren, Paul Lange, Pavel Antonov, Pepijn van de Geer, Peter de Kraker, Pratik Patel, PrzemysÅ‚aw Grzegorczyk, Roderich Schupp, Romain TartiÃ¨re, Ruben Vermeersch, Ryan Collier, Sandy Armstrong, Scott Peterson, Sebastian DrÃ¶ge, Tim Yamin, Tobias Mueller, Todd Berman, Travis Glenn Hansen, Trey Ethridge, Valentin Sawadski, Will Farrington, William Pettersson, Wouter Bolsterlee

Reporting Bugs, Joining the Community

If you encounter any bad behavior with this release, please do not hesitate to file bugs!

We welcome new contributors - developers, translators, artists, writers, support gurus - to join our community. Join us!