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[pud99]

Hi,

I've been a long time user of MC10, but over the past year or so, most of my audio listening time has been taken up with Podcasts. Nothing too extreme here, just been using iTunes. Unfortunately, iTunes has a terrible user interface for playing media files, so I thought I'd pop back to JRiver and see what's new. Was happy to see Podcast support, and liked the look of the functionality in the trial, so I purchased it.

Unfortunately, MC12 seems to have one major limitation that annoyed me greatly with iTunes...

Here's an example:

I've already subscribed to, and got all episodes for numerous feeds through iTunes. I've now begun subscribing to those same feeds in MC12 (version 12.0.198). What I want to be able to do, is select an individual episode in the feed, and tell it where the file can be found on disk, so it shows as being On Disk. My first attempt was Locate -> On Disk (External), but that doesn't work, because the filename is still the URL of the individual episode. My second attempt has been to edit the tags, and replace the filename with the actual file name and path where the corresponding file actually is. That bit worked, and I can now play the file just by double clicking on it. However, it still displays as 'Download', and I really want to be able to set it to 'On Disk'.

This was a major annoyance for me with iTunes, when I had all the podcasts in a different location, then moved things around, cleared the iTunes library, then wanted to 're-link' the downloaded podcasts up to the matching feed episode so everything would continue as normal.

Any tips?

[JimH]

You can tell MC that something is a podcast by editing the tags.  Look for Media Type.

Is that what you need?

[pud99]

Not really, no.

I already have all the files that make up the podcast feed stored locally, but because I have just added the feed to MC, they all show with an Episode Status of 'Download'. As I said, I can change the filename to point to the actual location of the file on my disk drive, but what I really need is to be able to get access to the 'Episode Status' field, so I can set it to 'On Disk'.

Note: If I change the filename of one of the episodes that are showing as 'Download', then the next time the feed is updated, my changes are lost and the filename reverts back to the URL of the episode.

[BartMan01]

It would be extremely useful to be able to tell MC "I already have this file and it is located here:". 

Two reasons:
1)  Files downloaded using another podcasting tool.
2)  Files that MC has trouble downloading (due to imperfect feeds or other issues).

I run in to #2 from time to time, a file (or files) in a feed that MC keeps failing on.  In most cases I can manually download the file from the feed just fine, but I have no way to tell MC that it is now on disk.

[pud99]

Yep, Bartman01, that's exactly the functionality I am looking for.

Still no further comment from J River I see.

I now have another similar problem, something wen't wrong with a Podcast download today, and it is showing as 'On Disk', but it is absolutely not on disk anywhere (and especially not in the 'Filename (Path)' that the tag is displaying.

Soo...I want to download it again, but can't because it's current Episode Status is 'On Disk'. Does anyone know a work around for this?

[BartMan01]

Highlight it, delete it from the library, click on "Show Deleted Episodes":  it will show up as 'deleted'.
Click on the 'deleted' episode status and it will re-download.
Click on "Hide Deleted Episodes" if you want to suppress them again.

[pud99]

Yeah, thanks Bartman01, I actually discovered that a little while after I wrote my last post. I was just nervous about how MC's handling of podcasts would react if I deleted one marked as On Disk from the library.

Thankfully, that allowed me to download it again properly.

Unfortunately, the podcast functions still seem quite unreliable, particularly with files not downloading correctly (I can download the exact same podcast episodes in iTunes without problem). I've read most of the podcast related posts on this forum, and it seems to be a bit unstable, and possibly the cause of MC12 crashing (even in 12.0.198). Thats a real shame, because it was one of the main reasons I upgraded from MC10.

Still, if the 'Episode Status' field was able to be modified by the user from say 'Download' to 'On Disk' (along with providing the location of the file you have already downloaded), or the status able to be changed from 'On Disk' to 'Download' (to allow the user to re-download an episode because something went wrong), then some of MC's shortfall could probably be overcome.

That, along with smarter download technology!  It needs the ability to complete partially downloaded files, and pause and resume downloads etc, similar to your average download manager.

Bartman01, I noticed in one of the posts you had pretty much given up on using MC for the downloading of Podcasts ... is that still the case?