INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Solomon on April 08, 2006, 08:08:38 pm

Title: Podcasts downloading more than once
Post by: Solomon on April 08, 2006, 08:08:38 pm

Is it normal to end up with multiple copies of downloaded podcasts?  In this case, the podcast episode appears only once in my library but there are two copies of it on disk.

Solomon

Title: Re: Podcasts downloading more than once
Post by: JimH on April 08, 2006, 09:21:50 pm

No, but anything is possible.  Just delete them if you want to.

Title: Re: Podcasts downloading more than once
Post by: m1abrams on April 08, 2006, 09:44:45 pm

I get this also.  I posted about it and it turns out that MC is using the FeedUrl as the unique identifier.  However I have found a few podcasts because of their use of mirrors causing a problem with MC to download multiple copies.

This should be fixed, I have not experienced this type of behaviuor with other RSS clients.  The biggest issue I have with this is it makes my "Unheard Podcast" playlist almost pointless.

Title: Re: Podcasts downloading more than once
Post by: JimH on April 08, 2006, 09:51:24 pm

Some feed URL's change.  This makes it difficult.

You should be able to manage this in the library by deleting duplicates.

Title: Re: Podcasts downloading more than once
Post by: m1abrams on April 09, 2006, 10:43:02 am

Sure you can manually delete the dups.  However if you are only working with podcasts via a Smartlist like "Unheard Podcasts" it is not obvious you have dups and if you only listen on a portable then deleting dups is not an option.

Telling the users to delete dups is not a solution.

Title: Re: Podcasts downloading more than once
Post by: Gene on April 24, 2006, 03:20:47 pm

Yea, I have had this problem all along.

Usually this occurs because we use the "Episode URL" as a unique identifier for an episode.   That works well if the Podcast RSS file doesn't change Episode URLs, but sometimes they do, and then you get duplicate episodes.

I could change it so the "Episode Name" is also a unique identifier.  However I have seen feeds where all the Episode Names are the same.  Its rare, but it does happen.

I know from experience that dates, file sizes and track numbers are unreliable, and episode GUIDs are often omitted.

Does anyone have a better suggestion than using the episode name?