Banshee is default player for Ubuntu 11.04. This neat player have the sync feature intended for use with media devices. My Nokia C6 doesn’t appear on the sidebar of banshee. It makes me wonder why would my phone doesn’t recognized as media device. Off to search I go…

After some searching, it appears that there is a way to make storage device appears as a media device to Banshee. The only thing that needed to be done is simply creating a new file named .is_audio_player in the root folder of the device with the some definition inside such as this.

name="Nokia C6"
audio_folders=Sounds/Digital/
output_formats=audio/mpeg,audio/aac,audio/x-ms-wma

The name parameter will appear in Banshee device name, put it anything you like. Name with space will have to be in double quotes.

audio_folder is the path on the device which stores audio files.

The last one is the definition of the output formats that your device supports which on my Nokia C6 are MP3, AAC and MP3.

There are other parameters that can be defined, but those that I don’t need. You can find it at the HAL documentation page.

To complete the requirement of transcoding to some proprietary formats, proceed with the installation of package gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse which can be found in the repository (provided that you enable the multiverse repository).

That’s it. Now I can manage my music on the device with Banshee… with ease.