Bangarang

Bangarang is a KDE media player. Its name comes from the Jamaican word for noisy, disorder or chaos.

Developer comments

The project, scratches my itch: To have a media – audio and video – player that tries to get the basics right with a not-overwhelming interface.

Why do it? Simple. Because I want to. Nothing more complicated than that.

As much as possible, the pillars of KDE and existing KDE infrastructures are/will be used, and constructive feedback provided to the respective projects.

The source code is maintained on http://gitorious.org and anyone interested in helping is certainly welcome.

Feedback and patches are definitely welcome. I only ask one thing: please be respectful. I do this in my spare time and, as such, I'd like to keep my motivation up.

What is new in this release:

• Many bugfixes inlcuding:
• invalid soprano queries resulting in missing info boxes.
• paths with ? weren't accessible.
• Play All didn't respect filtered lists plus a few other bugs when lists are filtered.
• rating multiple selected items weren't sticking.
• fields set to null when first clicked in the Info View.
• crash when trying to play a dvd from the device notifier.
• showing controls in full screen resizes video.
• unsightly genre numbers
• and more...
• New command line switch to adjust interface to work better on touch based devices. This includes larger touch targets, flick scrolling in lists, touch video to hide controls, enabling/disabling certain features and more. The desktop interface is unaffected by these changes.
• ownCloud support.
• New Recently Added lists
• Drag drop of folders on playlist recursively adds media files.
• Droplists with autocompletion when editing Artist, Albums, Genre, Actors, etc. in Info View.
• Music Genres now open the albums view instead of the artists view.
• Saved lists can now be exported to M3U files.
• Playback controls use dark palette when in fullscreen mode.

What is new in version 2.1 Beta:

• See commit log at http://gitorious/bangarang.

What is new in version 2.0.1:

• fix crash when playing video with phonon-gstreamer 4.5.0
• tag sorting
• updated translations

What is new in version 2.0 RC:

• We completed what I believe was a very successful and productive beta phase. I hope these efforts are reflected in this release candidate. Do not doubt that you can contribute in a substantive and meaningful way to open source software projects by providing helpful, constructive bug reports. Many bugs have been fixed and features implemented directly and solely as a result of the excellent issue reporting during this beta phase. I'll provide a full description of changes and improvements since 1.0 when the final 2.0 release is announced.
• All strings are now frozen and folks who would like to translate Bangarang into your favorite language for the final 2.0 release are welcome to do so in the usual ways - merge requests or email - over the remainder of this week.

What is new in version 2.0 Beta 1:

• New Info View sidebar that provides helpful information currently selected items:
• Recently played, highest rated and frequently played
• Info Fetching support for artists, movies, actors, directors, etc.
• Integrated metadata editing.
• Support for audio and video feeds
• Revamped filesystem media list browsing
• Nepomuk tag media list browsing
• Media lists (including playlist) filter
• MPRIS support
• Bookmarks
• Audio equalizer
• Shortcuts support
• Subtitles support
• Improved DVD support
• A diversity of new and exciting bugs

What is new in version 1.0.1:

• Fix gcc 4.5 compile issues.
• Fix build issues on certain platforms.
• Fix issue when updating rating of item in media list view that is not currently playing.
• Make sure playlist and Now Playing views are updated if they contain item(s) for which the info was changed.
• Disable screensaver during video playback.
• Include more mimetypes recognized as music.
• Fix odd crash when clicking previous button after next button clicked on empty playlist.
• Add splitter to medialist view.
• Phonon headers updated to compile with Qt 4.6.1.
• Fix issue preventing files from opening via smb KIO slave.

What is new in version 1.0:

• Bug fixes since RC:
• Fixed broken behavior with directories that have certain characters in the name.
• Fixed crash in some Qt4.6 installations when attempting to play media.
• Fixed synchronized updating of rating for media items that exist both in the playlist and in the media list.
• Fixed broken playback behavior (play/pause/stop, loading indicator) after encountering phonon error.
• Improvements since RC:
• Use correct Phonon audio output category (Music/Video) for the corresponding media type.
• Playback will attempt to continue with next item after encountering a phonon error during playback.
• Known issues:
• Muted playback is unmuted when playback transitions between audio and video type or after phonon error is encountered.

What is new in version 1.0 RC:

• Bug fixes since beta 3:
• Fixed updating and refreshing media info/metadata after using "Show Items".
• Fixed adding to saved video lists.
• Fixed saving of id3v2 artwork.
• Fixed media list title when reloading media after using "Show Items".
• Fixed updating media item metadata from saved lists.
• Fixed text cutoff in update remove notification.
• Improvements since beta 2:
• Improved compatibility with KDE SC 4.4 beta 2
• Added drag and drop support from Dolphin to playlist.
• Added Simplified Chinese translation.

What is new in version 1.0 Beta 3:

• Bug fixes since beta 2
• Fixed selecting and playing video categories
• Fixed playlist shuffle after playlist finished
• Fixed long delay when using Play Next, Play Previous.
• Fixed crash when removing items from playlist in shuffle mode.
• Fixed crash when removing info for all items in media list view.
• Fixed sort order of video items when selecting and playing video categories.
• Fixed file recognition on non-Utf8 locale systems
• Very basic phonon error handler.
• Much reduced power profile change notifications.
• Improvements since beta 2
• Improved, non-ui-blocking updates to the nepomuk data store with in-app progress indicator.
• Added support for translations. French, Dutch and German translations started.
• Initial support for basic video settings.
• Highlight currently playing item.
• Tooltip on Now Playing button show more info about currently playing item.
• Add/Remove items to/from saved lists.
• Rename saved lists
• Show Items - Drill-down browsing to playable items of multiple selected categories.
• Command line support for playing CD/DVD plus device actions.
• Updated video ontology in preparation for next release of Shared Desktop Ontologies.
• Show audio stream meta data.
• Improved M3U support.
• Added PLS support.
• Now Playing view gradient background color matches current color scheme.
• Known Issues
• id3v2 artwork isn't updated when saved - help welcome!
• "Show Items" works fine for browsing and playing media. However, updating and refreshing media info/metadata does not work with "Show Items".
• Adding items to saved video lists doesn't work properly.
• Single window support still being evaluated.

Requirements:

• KDE Plasma
• TagLib
• A fully functioning nepomuk repository, with a sensibly speedy backend (like sesame or virtuoso).

Limitations:

• This is beta quality software. This means most functions on the 1.0 target list are completed and it may eat a puppy or a kitten. Babies should be safe for now...