Banshee (media player)

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Banshee
Banshee icon
Banshee-2.0.png
Banshee's main interface in Ubuntu
Developer(s) Aaron Bockover, Alexander Kojevnikov, Bertrand Lorentz, and Gabriel Burt
Initial release 17 February 2005 (2005-02-17)[1]
Stable release 2.2.1  (November 1, 2011; 3 months ago (2011-11-01)) [±]
Preview release 2.3.5  (February 15, 2012; 14 days ago (2012-02-15)) [±]
Written in C# (Gtk#)
Operating system Linux, Mac OS X (beta), Windows (alpha)
Available in Multilingual
Type Media player
License MIT
Website banshee.fm

Banshee is an open-source media player, called Sonance until 2005.[2] Built upon Mono and Gtk#, it uses the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding and decoding various media formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play and import audio CDs and supports many portable media players, including Apple's iPod, Android devices and Creative's ZEN players.[3] Other features include Last.fm integration, album artwork fetching, smart playlists and podcast support. Banshee is released under the terms of the MIT License. Stable versions are available for many Linux distributions, as well as a beta preview for Mac OS X and an alpha preview for Windows.

Contents

[edit] Plugins

Banshee's plugin-capable architecture makes the software extensible and customizable. As of 2012 stable plugins include:

  • Audioscrobbler: Adds the capability of reporting played songs to a user's Last.fm playlist, and play last.fm radio stations (user's library, tags, similar to, etc.).
  • DAAP music sharing: Allows sharing of music libraries with iTunes and other DAAP-compatible music software. The current version of Banshee is only partially compatible with iTunes 7, allowing iTunes to open a Banshee library, but not vice-versa.
  • iPod manager: Allows the transferring of songs, videos, and album art to and from the device.
  • Metadata searcher using Musicbrainz: Automatically retrieves missing and supplementary metadata for library items, including album art.
  • Music Recommendations using Last.fm: Recommends music based on the currently playing song.
  • Mini-Mode plugin: Provides a small window with minimal playback controls and song information.
  • Multimedia keys support in GNOME: Banshee can be controlled via multimedia keys as configured through GNOME.
  • Notification Area Icon: Adds an icon to the notification area in GNOME.
  • Podcasting: Enables Banshee to subscribe to podcast feeds, which are updated on a regular basis. A "Find new podcasts" feature utilises Podcast Alley.
  • Radio: Provides support for streaming Internet radio stations.

[edit] Cross-platform support

Compared to the Linux builds, which have stable releases, the Mac OS X builds are considered beta quality, and Windows builds are alpha quality.

The first alpha release of Banshee on Windows was Banshee 1.9.4, released on February 23, 2011.[4][5][6]

[edit] Release history

Official Release History feature list
Official Calendar

Version Release date Significant changes
1.0 June 5, 2008
  • Album Browser
  • Play Queue
  • Now Playing section
  • Video support
  • Audio CD support
  • CD Ripping / Burning
  • Podcast support
  • Integrated Next/Shuffle button
  • Device support (MTP, iPod, Mass storage)
  • Mini mode
  • Automatic cover art
1.2 July 29, 2008
  • 10-band Equalizer
  • Internet radio
  • Music recommendations
  • DAAP client
  • Playlist importing
  • Compilation album support
  • Manual reordering of playlists and play queue
  • Amarok migration
1.2.1 August 12, 2008
  • Bugfix release
1.4.1 November 10, 2008
  • Improved device support
  • Support for the HTC Android G1
  • Support for Mac OS X
  • New track editor
  • New rescan library tool
1.4.2 January 20, 2009
  • Bugfix release
1.4.3 March 4, 2009
  • Improved MTP support
  • Device playlist sync
1.5.0 June 1, 2009
1.5.1 October 13, 2009
1.5.2 November 20, 2009
1.5.3 January 27, 2010
  • Sync device from playlist
  • Type-ahead Find
  • Optional cover art in lower left corner
  • Editable cover art
  • Separate library for audiobooks
  • Library-folder watcher
  • eMusic Importer/Downloader
1.5.4 February 24, 2010
1.5.5 March 10, 2010
  • Gapless playback
  • Album grid view
  • YouTube extension
1.5.6 March 20, 2010
  • Bugfix release
1.6.0 March 31, 2010
  • Cumulative update for everything since version 1.5.1
1.7.0 May 5, 2010
  • Ability to connect to remote DAAP servers
1.7.1 May 26, 2010
  • Improvements for Audiobook support, layout
1.7.2 June 30, 2010
  • Minor bug fixes
1.7.3 July 21, 2010
  • Amazon MP3 Store and downloader
  • Miro podcast directory
  • Bulk metadata fixup extension
1.7.4 August 11, 2010
  • User manual
1.7.5 September 1, 2010
  • iPod and iPhone / iPod Touch support
  • No more HAL dependency
1.7.6 September 15, 2010
  • Bugfix release
1.8.0 September 29, 2010
  • Cumulative update for everything since version 1.6.0
1.9.0 November 10, 2010
  • Artist/Album Browser Track Actions
  • 'Play After' Queue Options
  • User Interface Improvements
1.9.1 December 15, 2010
  • Ubuntu One Music Store and SoundMenu Extensions
  • Added support for embedded and external subtitles
1.9.2 January 18, 2011
  • Add support for Nexus S and Xperia X10 mini pro
  • Many improvements and fixes to the F1 user guide
  • SoundMenu: Implement the proper close/quit behavior
  • MPRIS: Implement the Playlists interface
  • Improved write-metadata-to-file performance
1.8.1 January 28, 2011
  • Bugfix release
1.9.3 February 2, 2011
  • Various fixes and improvements to the Windows build
  • MPRIS: Implement the recently added PlaylistChanged signal
  • SoundMenu: Implement the new registration process
  • Daap: Keep a list of recently used remote servers
  • Add back counts for top level libraries
  • Various other bug fixes
1.9.4 February 23, 2011
  • Development release and 2.0-release dependency freeze
  • First alpha release of the Windows build
  • Multimedia-Keys: Support Pause, FastForward, Rewind, Repeat and Shuffle
  • Advertise lastfm scheme handling in the .desktop files
  • Various other bug fixes (25 fixed since 1.9.3)
1.9.5 March 9, 2011
  • Development release, 2.0-release string freeze and 2.0-release feature freeze
  • Add support for handling u1ms:// links
  • Windows: Add Windows 7 thumbnail toolbar playback buttons
  • OS X Build: Work with new bockbuild, add MonoMac
  • Various other bug fixes (20 fixed since 1.9.4)
1.9.6 March 23, 2011
  • Rename banshee-1 to banshee in preparation for 2.0
  • AmazonMp3.Store: amazon.ca support
  • MiroGuide: Handle Listen links from front page
  • Dap: Add support for Sharp IS01
  • Playlists: Recognize m3u playlists without header
  • LibraryWatcher: Guard against watching incorrect dirs
  • MassStorage: Support Sirius Alpha Android phone
  • WebOSDevice: Support playlists
  • Windows: Auto-update functionality
2.0.0[7] April 6, 2011
  • 2.x major-number release
  • Artist/Album Browser Track Actions
  • 'Play After' Queue Options
  • User Interface Improvements
  • Ubuntu One Music Store and SoundMenu Extensions
  • Subtitles
2.1.0[8] May 12, 2011
  • eMusic store support
  • Various bug fixes (51 fixed since 2.0)
2.2.0 September 21, 2011
  • Support for the following Android devices: New Devices Supported: Motorola Atrix, Notion Ink Adam, Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy S2, Xperia X12
  • Support for the Barnes & Noble Nook
  • Support default internet radio stations
  • Various bug fixes (108 fixed since 2.0.0)
2.4(series) March 2012
  • Support for UPnP
  • Additional search filters
  • Improvements to the interface
Color Meaning
Red Old release
Green Current release
Orange Current development release
Blue Future release

[edit] Helix Banshee

Helix Banshee was a version of Banshee, included in older versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and openSUSE. It was based upon the Banshee core, but with a plug-in to add support for the Helix framework for playback and transcoding, in addition to GStreamer.

[edit] See also

Portal icon Free software portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ History - Banshee
  2. ^ Banshee rename git commit
  3. ^ http://library.gnome.org/users/banshee/1.8/sync.html.en
  4. ^ "bgo#641690 Comment #4". Gnome Bugzilla. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641690#c4. 
  5. ^ "Gabriel Burt, Twitter". Twitter. http://twitter.com/gabaug/status/39113347198758912. 
  6. ^ "OMG!Ubuntu! Article". OMG!Ubuntu!. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/02/banshee-alpha-for-windows-coming-next-week-and-other-banshee-news/. 
  7. ^ Project Banshee. "Banshee 2.0.0 Release Announcement". Banshee Media Player. Banshee. http://download.banshee.fm/banshee/stable/2.0.0/banshee-2.0.0.news. Retrieved 6 April 2011. 
  8. ^ http://banshee.fm/download/archives/2.1.0/

[edit] External links

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