Mirage extension for Banshee help

[fergiies]

Hi all,
I'm new to Ubuntu and Ubuntu forums, so please forgive me if this has been posted already. Before I switched, the only music player I ever used was itunes, and I really miss the Genius feature. Having done a bit of looking around, I downloaded Banshee. the mirage feature, though installed, does not show up in Banshee. Help?

[Mike V]

Did you find how to bring up the playlist generator? I could not find it and it seems that no one else has this problem.

[cheezbergher]

I've been having the same problem. I've never been able to get the Playlist Generator to show. Can anyone offer any advice for how to get this to work?

[Cronos89]

I'm on your same situation. I've added the ppa for banshee so that i could get the latest stable releases of banshee and its extensions.

After a clean reinstall, i've activated Mirage. And the only change that happens is that Tools -> Mirage Playlist Generator appears. Other than that, there's no extra funcionality.

Currently Running Ubuntu 10.10

[Cronos89]

*bump

[Remmelas]

I hate to 'me too', but, me too. Installed the extension, but doesn't behave as specified by the developers site. I have the option to 're-scan my collection', but no playlist generation abilities.

[Ronqui]

This is somewhat tricky as Banshee is developing quite quickly these days. The procedure may be different for older versions, but for version 1.8.0, here is the recipe:

1. First ensure that the Mirage plugin is enabled. Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Extensions -> Community Extensions -> Mirage Similarity Engine and make sure it is checked. If you don't have any Community Extensions, install banshee-extension-mirage or banshee-community-extensions.
2. Now that you've enabled Mirage, tell it to scan your music collection using Tools -> Mirage Playlist Generator -> Rescan the Music Library. This will take sometime, and plenty of CPU, if you have a large collection.
3. Mirage then enables a new play mode called "play by similarity". You can change the play mode by clicking on the small pulldown menu just to the right of the advance track (fast forward) button on the top right.
4. OR Click on "Play Queue" on the Side Bar, and at the top right, select Fill "by similar". Drag a song to the Play Queue and enjoy!

Once you've enabled Mirage, new additions will be automatically scanned once they've been imported into your library. Again, this will use some CPU time.

[apsot]

i just installed banshee 1.8.1 on 10.10 and in the beginning I thought that the only impact mirage had was for the button “Mirage Playlist Generator” to appear under tools. Then I discovered that in play queue I could select fill by similar which was not available without mirage.

[jjb2011]

Wasted hours on Banshee 2.0 (11.04, 64-bit). I got it configured, the Mirage Playlist Generator shows, and occasionally it will actually add more artists/songs. Other times, nothing. Very buggy.

But here's the thing:

1. Similar doesn't work but
2. Score does work

So when I enter Enya song, I get things like "Rage Against the Machine" and heavy metal. Say what??

On iTunes or Microsoft's Zune (similar "Genius" function), they pick things that are actually similar!

Does it work on older versions but not the latest one? One of the deal breakers with Linux is the music player. None are really up to the big boys, primarily because of (and ony because of) no reliable "similar artists" feature. Gone are the days when people listen to a single album (and I'm 48 so those days are gone for me too!).

Any alternatives that actually work? I keep trying, trying, trying players but . . . buggy at best and insane results (see above).

[sonnenwende93]

I am having the same issue as jjb2011. I can rescan my music library, but it does nothing. No increase in cpu usage or anything, and going to fill by similar in the play queue fills in tracks automatically, but they are anything but similar. The extension seems to just do nothing.