Updated Play Queue In Banshee
Banshee 1.6 will include an updated Play Queue extension. The changes are already in git master, here are a few teaser screen-shots:
Played tracks are not removed from the queue but are shown as greyed out. You can play them again if you want, drag and drop to the back of the queue, delete, etc.
The number of played tracks to show can be changed from the preferences dialogue.
You can also ask Banshee to automatically update the queue using any shuffle mode (including the new by rating and by score modes). The number of upcoming tracks can also be changed in the preferences.
The tracks are taken from the entire library or from any play list.
If you don’t like what has been added, you can refresh the upcoming tracks. Or you can add more of them (thanks Sandy!)
Tracks added manually are treated differently from those that had been added automatically. When adding, they are inserted to the front of the queue but after other manually-added tracks.
Also, they are preserved when you refresh the queue.
That’s about it. If you like what you saw you can try the git master version. Otherwise just wait until 1.6 is out, it shouldn’t take too long.
2009-10-16 at 02:35
Really cool :)
Maybe you could draw a light horizontal line between the manually added and the auto-added ones?
So one can see which will be changed on refresh.
So far awesome nonetheless.
2009-10-16 at 08:07
@mike: The problem with this approach is that the tracks in the queue can be re-shuffled by the user by dragging and dropping them. We could use a slightly different opacity though, feel free to file a bug at BGO.
2009-10-16 at 22:44
Great! Now how about reverse engineering the new iTunes DJ mode so that iPhone/iPod’s running the Remote App can see the iTunes DJ via bonjour and browse the library, requesting, and voting for requested songs:
http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/11/itunes-dj-functionality-in-iphone-remote-app-lets-party-guests-request-and-choose-songs/
Keep up the awesome work!
2009-10-17 at 01:03
@Redth: I personally don’t care too much about hardware or software that has to be reverse-engineered.
2009-10-22 at 15:12
[...] Alexander blogged more about this feature. [...]
2010-04-01 at 07:08
[...] Se trata de una extensión que hace que Banshee vaya escogiendo canciones de entre la biblioteca, acorde en género, artista, álbum o puntuación con la lista de reproducción actual. Esta función me recuerda mucho a iTunes Dj. Más información sobre esta feature aquí. [...]
2010-04-02 at 04:14
[...] Se trata de una extensión que hace que Banshee vaya escogiendo canciones de entre la biblioteca, acorde en género, artista, álbum o puntuación con la lista de reproducción actual. Esta función me recuerda mucho a iTunes Dj. Más información sobre esta feature aquí. [...]
2010-04-30 at 16:26
I don’t really get how this is intended to work. usually, if I have fill by artist or album selected, I will just get the first 6 tracks from the same album by an artist. if this is the intended functionality, then I think the terms are a bit misleading. when I see an autofill feature in a playlist with options like “fill by song” and “fill by artist” or “fill by album” I’m thinking that I will get an autoqueue that will fill up according to the currently playing artist. maybe it will be a random 6 songs only by that artist (decent) or maybe, given the last.fm integration, it will be a random 6 songs from artists similar to that artist (nice, but not expected). however, it certainly should not just be “here are the 1st six tracks from this dude’s one album.” that isn’t exciting at all.
i was hoping this would be similar to iTunes Genius mode. it’s nice to have 6 separate algorithms to make sure that each song has an equal chance, or each genre, rating, or album. but most users don’t want that. they want to click a song and then have the media player do everything else. people rarely painstakingly make a playlist in the traditional sense. maybe for themed parties or the infamous “booty mix.” most personal computers need a media player to turn on something while we clean house, and you don’t just want to hear an album through.
2010-04-30 at 17:54
@Parker: What you are describing is implemented by the Mirage extension which is part of Banshee Community Extensions [1]. Mirage adds a new play queue mode called “fill by similar”.
[1] http://banshee-project.org/download/extensions/