Banshee

Release Date: September 29, 2010
Source Tarball: banshee-1-1.8.0.tar.bz2
Release Information: NEWS, sha256sum

Banshee 1.8 is a stable release, the culmination of six month’s work by 67 programmers, artists, documentation writers, and translators. These notes aggregate the highlights from the 1.7 development releases.

Amazon MP3 Store

Watch the Banshee Amazon MP3 Store Screencast!

This new extension provides a source from which users can browse, search, preview, purchase, and download music from the Amazon MP3 store in all countries where it is offered: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Japan.

Music that is purchased through the new integrated Amazon MP3 store will automatically begin downloading and importing into the Banshee music library.

When previewing music on the Amazon MP3 store in Banshee, the previews will play through Banshee, showing up in the header, and not through Flash.

Amazon MP3 Downloader

The support for Amazon MP3 is not limited just to the store. If you decide to purchase music through your regular web browser, Amazon MP3 will provide a .amz file, a sort of playlist that indicates how the MP3s can be downloaded.

Banshee now associates itself with these .amz files and will download and import the MP3s referenced in them.

The Amazon MP3 Store and Downloader extensions are entirely separate. This allows you to pick your preferred user experience for purchasing music through Amazon MP3. The Amazon MP3 Store extension can be disabled if desired and the downloader will still work with an external web browser.

Other ways to download .amz files include opening manually with your operating system’s file manager, the Import Media dialog available through the Media -> Import menu, or the command line client distributed with Banshee: $ bamz foo.amz. Bamz will download the .amz contents in the current directory, and will not import the MP3s into the Banshee library automatically.

For more information on the Amazon MP3 integration in Banshee 1.7.3, read Aaron Bockover’s blog posts on the two separate extensions:

Miro Podcast Directory

Building on the same new WebKit integration in Banshee 1.7.3 as the Amazon MP3 Store, a new Miro Podcast Directory extension has been implemented. The source integrates with miroguide.com, allowing users to discover, stream, and subscribe to podcasts in a way never before possible in Banshee.

Much more work for tighter integration with the Miro Podcast Directory will come in future releases.

Bulk Metadata Fixup Extension

A new tool is available from the Tools -> Fix Music Metadata menu item that allows for bulk metadata fixing. This feature proposes to merge artists and albums that vary only by case, & vs and, etc.

Improved Apple Device Support

iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and iPod devices are now supported via the awesome libgpod library.

Revamped Hardware Backend

Uses the latest Linux hardware stack, a combination of GIO, udev, and media-player-info files, to provide support for CDs and digital audio players.

Keybinding for Switching Sources

Typing ‘g’ activates the source switcher, where you can type the name of a source to switch to it. You can type its acronym or a substring as well. As soon as only one source matches, it will be activated. For example, you can type ‘g’ and then ‘np’ to switch to Now Playing.

Improved Audiobook Support

The Audiobooks library is now enabled by default, and audiobook tracks are now better organized into books. The last position in each book is automatically saved, so you can resume playing a book right from where you stopped.

User Manual

Available via Help » Contents menu and F1. Uses the latest GNOME documentation technology, Mallard.

Other Enhancements

Now Playing simplify mode that declutters the UI
Play Queue shuffle action
Improve the downloading and visual refreshing of new cover art
Many MeeGo specific improvements and fixes
New preference to have the classic album layout instead of the grid view
Support for reading and writing MusicBrainz IDs
Show the TrackEditor fields as read-only mode when they are not editable
Add metadata-saving support for File System Queue (bgo#609411)
Decrease the latency in changing playback volume
Overhaul GNOME proxy support (bmc#1920)
Refresh podcast feeds when network is reconnected
Miro Guide teaser in Podcasts
Podcast errors shown to user
Improved Last.fm authentication experience
Last.fm streaming can be disabled separately from the other Last.fm features.
Play menu item in track context menu
Wrap long strings in the Now Playing view
Add visual separators in the source view between categories of sources
Culturally format the status bar item count (e.g. in en_US 1,000 instead of the old 1000)
Tweak the grid view album artwork hover effect
Default smart playlists hidden when empty, for new users
Begin editing the name of newly added playlists
“Amazon MP3s” Music smart playlist
Improved device support:
- Droid X, Galaxy Portal, Xperia X10, and DEXT/CLIQ device support
- Improved Maemo device support
- Better MTP device detection
- Put all videos in the video folder on MTP devices
Developers: DBus API additions for showing various dialogs
Developers: new Hyena.Downloader API for performing downloads and easy HTTP operations: HttpFileDownloader, HttpStringDownloader
Developers: new Banshee.WebBrowser API for creating embedded WebKit web browsers and sources. Currently used by the new Amazon MP3 store, Miro Guide, and the Wikipedia context pane.
Distributors: the webkit-sharp dependency was dropped, and instead we now take a dependency directly on libwebkit 1.2.2+ for the new Banshee.WebBrowser API

Notable Bug Fixes (230 fixed since 1.6.0!)

Fix for fullscreen video under Mutter
Fix videos playing back in a new window
Fix crashes related to Gtk.Widget subclassing
Fix crashes related to a11y
NotificationArea fixes
Cover art aspect ratio/scaling fixes
Fix Youtube playback
Fix deletion of Podcast metadata during modification
Fix a crash related to the notification deamon
Fix fetching cover for albums with several discs
Several fixes for the N800 device
Fix various volume-related issues
bgo#621480: Fix Play Queue when using it with different locales
bgo#621687: Fix the Internet Archive playback
bgo#613333: Correct Play Queue track reordering
bgo#624667: Fix cover art refreshing
bgo#622826: Fix a slow running query to speed things up
bgo#602840: Fix importing of compilation albums
bgo#622028: Fix loading of libbnpx11.so on some distros
bgo#621955: Wrap instead of elipsize Last.fm titles
bgo#608382: Escape %20 in filenames for items without embedded metadata
bgo#624531: Escape Uri value in SQL query
bgo#588255: Fix notification icon transparency
bgo#619036: Fix glitchy search entry
bgo#624569: Fix scrolling Extensions list with keyboard
bgo#553433: Fix issue that could block song scrobbling
bgo#600340: Fix subscribing to certain podcasts (eg podbean.com)
bgo#620826: Fix URIs of tracks synced to iPods
bgo#626786: Prevent crash in search-for-artist when blank
bgo#628388: Fix overflow bug with MTP playlists
bgo#625683: Fixup checkboxes now clickable
bgo#626928: Fetch podcast artwork asap
bgo#626791: Catch crashes caused by missing extensions
bgo#528383: Re-enable writing video metadata to file
bgo#626803: Fix Ogg rating parsing in non-English locales
bgo#628832: [MTP] Fix MTP-device memory issues breaking Playlists, Albums
bgo#629095: [MTP] Fix MTP devices being named ‘???’
bgo#629373: [MTP] Workaround MTP sigsegv bug
bmc#1115: Fix a pipeline deadlock evident on MeeGo

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) >= 2.0.3.7
Required to build default feature stack:
- libmtp >= 0.2.0
- mono-zeroconf >= 0.8.0
- boo >= 0.8.1
- webkit-1.0 >= 1.2.2
- gdata-sharp >= 1.4
- glib >= 2.22, gio-sharp >= 2.22.2, gtk-sharp-beans >= 2.14.1, gudev-sharp and gkeyfile-sharp
- libgpod-sharp >= 0.7.95
Run-time requirements for default feature stack:
- GIO/udev
- Brasero >= 0.8.1
- Avahi
- gst-plugins-bad (providing the bpmdetect GStreamer plugin)

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, Alex Launi, Alex Mauer, Andreas Nilsson, Andrés G. Aragoneses, Aurélien Mino, Benjamín Valero Espinosa, Bertrand Lorentz, Chow Loong Jin, Christian Krause, Claude Paroz, David Nielsen, Félix Velasco, Gabriel Burt, Iain Lane, Ján Sokoly, Jensen Somers, Jeroen Budts, Jordi Mas, Julien Moutte, Kevin Duffus, Micha? Sawicz, Mike Gemünde, Nicolo’ Chieffo, Paul Cutler, Pete Johanson, Robin Stocker, Ruben Vermeersch, Zhou Ting

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

Alexandre Prokoudine, Andrej Žnidarši?, Andre Klapper, António Lima, Aron Xu, A S Alam, Baris Cicek, Benjamin Valero Espinosa, Bruce Cowan, Bruno Brouard, Cheng-Chia Tseng, Christian.Kirbach, Claude Paroz, Daniel Nylander, Daniel S. Koda, Emmanouel Kapernaros, Félix Velasco, Fran Diéguez, Gabor Kelemen, Gianvito Cavasoli, Hendrik Richter, Joe Hansen, Jordi Mas, Kentaro KAZUHAMA, Kristjan Schmidt, Marek ?ernocký, Mario Blättermann, Maxim V. Dziumanenko, Michel Recondo, Og B. Maciel, Petr Kovar, Ville-Pekka Vainio, Wouter Bolsterlee, Xandru Armesto, Žygimantas Beru?ka, ??????? ????????????

Contributors In Past Releases

Aaron Bockover, Alan McGovern, Alex Bennee, Alex Kloss, Alex Launi, Alex Mauer, Alexander Hixon, Alexander Kojevnikov, Alexandros Frantzis, Alp Toker, Anders Petersson, Andrea Cimitan, Andreas Neustifter, Andreas Nilsson, Andrew Conkling, Andrés G. Aragoneses, Andy Midgette, Arthur Carli, Arun Raghavan, Aurélien Mino, Aydemir Ula? ?ahin, Ben Maurer, Benjamín Valero Espinosa, 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 Hergert, Christian Krause, Christoph Burgdorf, Christopher James Halse Rogers, Claude Paroz, Cody Russell, Cosmin Banu, Dan Wilson, Dan Winship, Daniel Munkton, Daniel Siegel, David Nielsen, David Spreen, David Stone, Diego E. Pettenò, Eitan Isaacson, Elena Grassi, Eoin Hennessy, Eric Butler, Erik Schmidt, Fabian Jost, Felipe Almeida Lessa, Fernando Casanova, Florent Thoumie, Fredrik Hedberg, Félix Velasco, Gabriel Burt, Garrett LeSage, Götz Waschk, Haitao Feng, Hans Petter Jansson, Harold Schreckengost, 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, Jeroen Budts, Jo Shields, Johannes Kuhn, John Millikin, Jordi Mas, Jorge Castro, Julien Moutte, Juri Pakaste, Ján Sokoly, Jérémie Laval, K. Vishnoo Charan Reddy, Ken Vandine, Kevin Duffus, Konstantin Oshiyko, Larry Ewing, Lauri Kotilainen, Lukas Lipka, Marijn Ros, Matt Enright, Michael Kaiser, Michael Martin-Smucker, Michael Monreal, Michael Monreal, Micha? Sawicz, Miguel de Icaza, Mike Gemünde, Mike Urbanski, Moritz Schallaböck, Nathan Palmer, Neil Loknath, Nicholas Doyle, Nicholas Parker, Nicolò Chieffo, Nils Naumann, Oben Sonne, Olivier Duff, Oscar Forero, Pacho Ramos, Patrick van Staveren, Paul Cutler, Paul Lange, Pavel Antonov, Pepijn van de Geer, Pete Johanson, Peter de Kraker, Pratik Patel, Przemys?aw Grzegorczyk, Robin Stocker, Roderich Schupp, Romain Tartière, Ruben Vermeersch, Ryan Collier, Sandy Armstrong, Scott Peterson, Sebastian Dröge, Shaun McCance, Tim Yamin, Tobias Mueller, Todd Berman, Travis Glenn Hansen, Travis Reitter, Trey Ethridge, Valentin Sawadski, Will Farrington, William Pettersson, Wouter Bolsterlee, Zhou Ting

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!

Banshee 1.8.0