[NowPlaying] NowPlaying doesn't display cover art from Banshee 1.2.1

[Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek]

this is bug like https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/221012 but cover doesn't show up and disappear - it is just blank/transparent, though I see covers in Banshee.

it seems I can't provide too much info. screenlets are 0.1.2 and Banshee is 1.2.1.

[Chris (chris-neary)]

I can confirm this. Since banshee-1 I haven't been able to get the Now Playing screenlet to recognise Banshee's metadata at all so I removed the screenlet for about a month. I've just added it again and now it recognises track data, but it's not detecting the cover art although it is present in the Banshee application window.

Banshee is 1.2.1
Screenlets is 0.1.2
NowPlaying screenlet is 0.3

Any more information I can provide, let me know.

I've attached screenshots of both Banshee 1.2.1 and Rhythmbox 0.11.5 and the display of the NowPlaying screenlet during playback with each application.

[Chris (chris-neary)]

I have no idea how this has transpired, but I'm using Banshee 1.3.3 (svn) and Banshee 1.2.1 (stable) alongside each other (ie, the 1.2.1, stable version is make install'd, the svn version I run from the source directory).

Screenlets and the NowPlaying screenlet in particular have not changed versions. They are still running as 0.1.2 and 0.3 respectively.

While running 1.2.1 the NowPlaying screenlet decided to interact with Banshee! It worked! For one particular album; the album I used in the screenshot while running Rhythmbox.

I thought maybe when Rhythmbox passes a cover image to the screenlet, the screenlet remembers this image and is actually capable of talking to new Banshee, but not capable of translating that communication into displaying the correct (or any) cover image. It was a mini-eureka moment, but unfounded because I can not now replicate this strange behaviour.

Anybody who understands how the screenlet grabs its cover art from Banshee please throw in your thoughts.

Does new Banshee not yet support dbus, or whatever other mechanism would be required for the communication? (But then that rules out the semi-communication which seems to have occured when playing the album I previously played in Rhythmbox to positive result)

I'm more sure on the origins of the universe than I am on those of this bug!

I've attached a screenshot (see my previous attachment for context) of this strange new behaviour. Other albums played in Rhythmbox with cover art displayed in the screenlet do not adopt this behaviour in Banshee for some odd reason.

[Laurent Dinclaux (dreadlox)]

Also in jaunty

[Laurent Dinclaux (dreadlox)]

Found a player BansheeAPI
Setting callbacks
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/screenlets/NowPlaying/NowPlayingScreenlet.py", line 316, in dbus_check_player
    if player and player.is_active(self.dbus_iface):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/screenlets/plugins/LastFMProxy.py", line 39, in is_active
    app = mpdclient2.connect()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/screenlets/plugins/mpdclient2.py", line 329, in connect
    conn = mpd_connection(host, port)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/screenlets/plugins/mpdclient2.py", line 287, in __init__
    self.talker = socket_talker(host, port)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/screenlets/plugins/mpdclient2.py", line 22, in __init__
    self.sock.connect((host, port))
  File "<string>", line 1, in connect
socket.error: [Errno 111] Connexion refusée

[Dan McCombs (overridex)]

This seems to be caused by NowPlaying using a generic dbus interface to allow it to work with many different players, and Banshee does not provide the filename to cover art over it whereas the other players do.

I worked around this by adding the ability for NowPlaying to guess the filename of a cover based on the artist/album info that is provided by Banshee. It's a workaround, the real fix would be to modify Banshee to provide the cover art filename as the other players do, but I've been using this a few months for myself and it works well for me, so I figured I'd post it somewhere for others to use if they like.

This patch is against the NowPlaying screenlet from the 0.1.2-3ubuntu2 package in Jaunty.

[Dan McCombs (overridex)]

I should note that I've been using this with Banshee 1.4.3-3ubuntu2.

Also, I modified the filename in the patch so you can patch -p0 it correctly.

[Papp Bence (sclegnrbs)]

Fix committed in #594.