Banshee (was Re: [PLUG] iPod)

Aaron Baer aaronb at personaltelco.net
Mon Feb 20 03:28:16 UTC 2006


On Sun, 2006-02-19 at 14:34 -0800, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Feb 2006, Aaron Baer wrote:
> > The latest Banshee ( 0.10.4 )supports iPods directly playing and copying 
> > tracks to and from your iPod.
> >
> > Banshee is the sniz.. version 0.10.4 is in Ubuntu Dapper and works 
> > GREAT. It has easily surpassed rythmbox in usefulness.
> 
> So I just downloaded this and it's... weird.
> 
> For instance, you can't sort by artist AND album.  If I sort by artist, 
> the order in which tracks appear doesn't even depend on the album with 
> which they're associated.  If I sort by album, the albums are listed and 
> seem to be properly ordered by track number, but the albums are sorted 
> alphabetically regardless of artist.

This is really all dependent on how reliable your metadata is in your
mp3's. All my tracks that I don't have consistent data on definitely
fall into what you're describing. However, if the files all have track
numbers, artist, album, and song names the sorting works really great
from what I can tell. You can however edit the metadata right withing
banshee and just start making your tracks behave better. The icon in the
bottom right corner will open a dialog to edit that data. I believe
right clicking on the object will as well. Any albums you rip yourself
will have the correct data retrieved via musicbrainz as long as you have
adequate access to their Internet database. I know I've been working on
cleaning up my tracks for a while now. Seems a never ending battle.
There is a setting in Banshee's plugin, Metadata Searcher, that trys
it's best at repairing the metadata as well.


> 
> Furthermore, in the "encoding" section, there's a list of three encoding 
> options (ogg, flac, and pcm).  I guess I can understand why they wouldn't 
> want to link to an MP3 encoding library, but no line for an arbitrary 
> external encoder?

Banshee uses the Gstreamer frame work. You'll need gstreamer0.8-lame for
mp3 encoding.

others that may also be helpful:
gstreamer0.8-plugins-multiverse
gstreamer0.8-mad
gstreamer0.8-flac
gstreamer0.8-vorbis
gstreamer0.8-theora


> And what's this with "ipod transcoding"?  The iPod will play MP3s 
> directly.  Is it going to make AAC files from them and put them onto the 
> iPod?  The compression won't be the same and my music probably won't fit 
> anymore.
> 

When you have the gstreamer-lame stuff installed you'll have a Lame Mp3
option for moving files to the iPod. You can have it transcode them to
aac on the way to the iPod if you want.. but you can definitely move
mp3's to it.

> All in all, I think I'll be sticking with the annoying gtkpod.  Except for 
> the daapd sharing, I don't see any advantages to using this software.
> 

To each their own.. However, I've been enjoying the powerful all in one
wonderment that is banshee.. 

encode cd's to multiple formats
burn audio cd's
share your music to the network
listen to shared music on the network
listen to your local music library
listen to tracks off of your ipod
put tracks on your ipod
get cool album cover art
edit metadata and get updated info from the Internet
create playlists

That's a mighty spicy meatball!

A-

-- 
----
Aaron Baer
aaronb at personaltelco.net
http://www.personaltelco.net/
http://aaron.slyness.org/
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