Hello All...
I think I may have found some problems in video podcast support within the latest release of Media Center (11.1.196). The problems occurred in the prior release I had installed too (191 I think?)
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Problem #1: I recently subscribed to this ABC News video podcast:
http://abcnews.go.com/xmldata/xmlPodcast?id=1478958You'll notice in the enclosure tag:
type="video/quicktime"
And the filename looks something like
060907wnt_webcast.mov?CMP=OTC-3V9R06864381
But Media Center seems to think that the file is of type "MP3" and attempts to tag it as such, giving me the following message:
Media Center encountered errors while tagging and moving files. Check that the files exist, are not read only, and are not in use by other programs.
Tagging Error: C:\Podcasts\Episode59898190.mp3
If I rename the extension to .mov, it plays just fine in Media Center. In summary, Media Center is failing to recognize that the file is a .mov file.
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Problem #2: I'm not sure you could call this a "bug" per se, but it is annoying nonetheless and thought you should be aware of it. I subscribed to this video podcast:
http://www.blueman.com/podcast/blueman_podcast_feed.xmlThe file is downloaded, and this time, it is even given it's proper extension (.m4v), but it will not play in Media Center. All I get is the warning icon next to the file after I attempt to play it. No further details are provided to me. If I attempt to load the file into QuickTime directly, I get the following useless message:
Error -37: a bad filename or volume name was encountered
Now, as a developer, I've dealt with the "lovely" QuickTime SDK for windows, I suspect I know what the problem is here. The full path to the file on my system is:
C:\Podcasts\BlueMan\2006-07-11 Blue Man Group Podcast- Chapter 2_ Blue Man Group Music.m4v
I'm pretty sure this filename is incompatible with the Apple QuickTime SDK, since the SDK bizzarely emulates an Apple OS level SDK to deal with files and file names. The file name is apparently way too long. If I rename the file to something alot shorter such as C:\Podcasts\BlueMan\3.m3v, it plays back just fine in media center.
There is a workaround though. "Edit this feed" and manually "Set Tag Properties", changing the filename to something simple like "[date]" and it works just fine on the next download.
Unfortunately, long filenames simply represent an ugly situation that Apple still hasn't dealt with. One option you guys should consider is sending the short 8.3 filename to Apple QuickTime SDK, using the Win32 SDK call GetShortPathName to conver the string.
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Hope this information helps.
Take care,
Andrew Koransky