Download your friends' Banshee library metadata and check out what they listen to, their ratings, BPM values, etc.
View your friends' playlists and export them to disk
Share what you're listening to with all your instant messaging friends by advertising the track, artist, and album of the currently playing track in Empathy's status message. This can be toggled on / off
Download your friends' music; one track at a time or a selection. You can cancel ones in progress, queued, individually or all at once. The sender has the option to cancel all in progress / queued only. Both sender and receiver get a progress bar. File sharing can be toggled on / off
Stream your friends' music. Streaming can be toggled on / off.
A development version ie. git-master version of NDesk.DBus is bundled with this tarball.
1) a) if banshee is installed to /usr/local ./autogen.sh b) or, if banshee is installed to /usr ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr c) or, if you wish to install to ~/.config/banshee-1/addins: ./autogen.sh --enable-user-extension
Option c) is the easiest, if you don't know where banshee is installed.
2) make
3) sudo make install
The extension is auto-enabled by default. So, the next time you load Banshee, the Telepathy extension will load automatically.
1.) Start-up
When Banshee starts, the Telepathy extension will load after a short delay. If Empathy is started on your machine and you have Jabber accounts online, Banshee will query each contact to see if they have Banshee running with the Telepathy extension installed and active. If Empathy is not started, the extension will simply monitor until it is.
2.) Browsing a Contact's Library
Each contact that has Banshee and the Telepathy extension active will be displayed as children of the 'Contacts' source. Click a contact to send them a request for permission to browse their library. If they accept, their library will appear in Banshee shortly thereafter.
3.) Streaming
After a contact's library has been downloaded, attempting to play a track will result in the track getting streamed over a Telepathy Stream tube. Playback can be started from the library or playlists. Playback is continuous and seeking is functional. You will get errors if the user you are streaming from has it disabled.
4.) Downloading
To download a track, first ensure that a contact is selected and you have downloaded their library data. Then, right-click a track and select 'Download Track(s).' You may also download a selection of tracks by making the selection holding SHIFT/CTRL while selecting tracks. When downloads start, you will see a progress display in the lower left corner of the Banshee application window. To cancel downloads, make a selection of downloading tracks, right-click and click 'Cancel Download(s).' Alternatively, you may cancel all downloads by clicking the 'X' that appears in the progress bar in the lower left corner of the Banshee application window (please see the DISCLAIMER file for further information on downloading).
Downloads are saved to a cache location (see Notes). The folder hierarchy will follow what has been specified in Banshee preferences for File System Organization. Also, completed downloads will be automatically added to your library, so you can begin listening to your download right away.
Note that if the user you are downloading from has downloading disabled, nothing will happen.
5.) Sharing What You're Listening to
To announce to your contacts what you are currently playing in Banshee, right-click on 'Contacts' and select 'Share What I'm Currently Playing.' It is a toggle option, so each click will either enable or disable the option.
It is recommended that you take a backup of your Banshee library. To make a backup: cp ~/.config/banshee-1/banshee.db to a filename of your choosing. To restore, simply copy that filename back to banshee.db.
Smart playlists are not downloaded; only normal ones.
Downloads are saved to: ~/.cache/banshee-1/extensions/contacts/partial-downloads Once complete, auto-import follows your Banshee settings. ie. if you have 'Copy to Library on Import' checked, the download will get copied to your library folder.
If same file exists in library after a download, it is not copied: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=540597
If 'Copy to Library on Import' is not checked, the track is imported from the cache. This may not be appropriate.
The download cache is never cleared.
Right-click a contact and selecting 'Cancel Browse Request' will cancel the outstanding request with the selected contact, if one exists. However, if the accept dialog is open on the other side of the request, it will not close. See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22337
If you are using Empathy versions < 2.27.3, you may have to add your gmail accounts as jabber ones and not gtalk.
Transfer speeds are highly dependant on the Telepathy framework's ability to establish a P2P connection. If traffic goes through Jabber servers, be prepared for a highly sluggish experience. See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22930