Here are the most noteworthy and complete features we’d like to call out in RC2 and get your feedback on:

• Importing iTunes libraries will no longer trigger a hang.
• Using the the Windows Media Playback and QuickTime Playback add-ons we’ve brought back the ability to play pre-authorized DRM media: WMA DRM on Windows; Fairplay on Windows and Mac.
• mashTape has been updated and will no longer invoke Flash player security warnings.
• We’ve adjusted the buffer size for streaming media but we’re still working on the final setting. If you think it’s too high you can adjust it by following these steps.
• Video support has been temporarily removed from the application. Our move to GStreamer introduced some new video related bugs that couldn’t be addressed in time for this release. Since video has been an unsupported feature we decided that this was the prudent thing to do for now. You can absolutely count on us re-introducing video support in a future release down the road!
• When viewing Album art at fullsize you can now easily close the window.
• When clicking on a track in the library invoking inline editing of metadata is now less likely to appear when you weren’t looking for it.
• We resolved a number of bugs that could crash the application (thanks for always submitting your crash reports. Your anonymous data really helps us track down issues!)

The RC2 release notes contain additional details about this build including a list of known issues.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 1.0 final!

Bloggers & Press: This release is not our final 1.0 product and is not ready to be reviewed. Since we’re still landing code we suggest postponing any review of the Songbird Player until our Final 1.0 product is released. If you’re interested in reviewing the 1.0 build feel free to contact us at: press [at] songbirdnest [dot] com. We’ll be more than happy to give you access to it prior to launch. Thanks for the care and attention you’ve shown Songbird over the past year.

Here are the most noteworthy features we’d like to call out in RC2 and get your feedback on:

• Smart Playlists: Create playlists that automatically update based on criteria you set.
• Album Art: Read, write and display album artwork. There’s a new Album Art Display Pane in the bottom of the Service Pane that shows the artwork associated with currently playing track. In the Metadata Editor, you can add, remove, cut, copy and paste artwork to a track – changes will be saved to the file(s) you edit.

The RC1 blog post has a list of additional features we’ve been working on for this release.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 0.7 final!

Download 0.5rc2 (release notes)

The oh5 train is getting ready for its final stop. In the meantime, we’re making another local stop!

In this update we’ve made a number of fixes to our MTP support on Windows so be sure to plug in your MTP device and give it a try! And, please share your findings on our MTP Device Compatibility Wiki Page.

We don’t want to bore the regular passengers so if you’re not sure what’s new in 0.5 you can read our 0.5rc1 summary (which also contains additional requirements and developer resouces).

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 0.5 final!

All aboard!!