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[TimAlexander]

I was quite happy to see that the multiple downloads and returning deleted files issues with podcasts were fixed in build 273.  Thank you so much for that!

Unfortunately, the new podcast behavior in 273 is causing problems for me.  Previously the feeds I subscribed to that mixed text and podcast content would only show the audio and video in MC, essentially skipping the text content.  Now that content shows up.  For example, see http://feeds.feedburner.com/JawboneRadio.  Previously I would see the weekly audio shows and the video posts every couple of days.  Now, if Len posts a text post, it shows up in MC, too.  I'm not sure if this is necessarily bad, but it's weird, and it's not what I expect my podcatcher to do.  iTunes only shows the audio.  Juice only downloads the audio and video.  MC shows the same content I would see in Google Reader.  Was this done intentionally, or is it just a byproduct of some other work?  If it's intentional, is there a way to filter the feeds or restore the previous behavior?

There's another odd byproduct of this behavior.  If the feed returns a text error (like 403 forbidden, which Today In Music History http://www.denverpostplus.com/podcasts/podcast.php?channel=11 did for a few days), that gets downloaded, renamed, and entered into MC as the mp3 for that particular podcast.  In other words, I now have 3-4 days of short text files named something like "2007-07-03 Today in Music History for 07-03-2007.mp3" instead of the actual MP3s.  Previously these downloads would have failed.  Now they succeed and I don't have any way of getting the real mp3 into MC via the podcast interface.  MC thinks the podcast downloaded successfully, so deleting it won't help.  I can download and import them manually, but I would expect MC to handle the errors for me. 

Finally (sorry...), KQED put a text-based entry in their feed today.  Here's the actual web page: http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R707060633?itemMD5=19118759164d42a535597a17f8b703f8 and here's the feed: http://www.kqed.org/.pod/questaudio.
See how the web page doesn't end in .html?  MC renamed it as 2007-07-05 Eco-Golf Anyone_.mp3.  I can see *why* MC does what it does, but I would expect MC to skip the file rather than creating an entry I have to delete to get rid of.  Juice only show the audio content.

Sorry for dumping so much in here, but these are the problems I'm currently seeing.  You guys are doing great work and I really appreciate it.  Please keep it up!

[John Gateley]

Hi Tim,  Thanks very much for the helpful comments, I'll take a look at this tomorrow. Hopefully these are easy fixes. I've made very large internal changes recently, so I expected a thing or two like this.

j

[TimAlexander]

No problem.  If you need me to do anything to help just let me know.

[John Gateley]

This is fixed in 276 or higher.

I put in a fix last week for some malformed podcasts that had enclosures, but no enclosure URLs. I was too aggressive in getting a content URL for these cases, and that caught the extra text/html stuff you saw.

j

[TimAlexander]

There's another odd byproduct of this behavior.  If the feed returns a text error (like 403 forbidden, which Today In Music History http://www.denverpostplus.com/podcasts/podcast.php?channel=11 did for a few days), that gets downloaded, renamed, and entered into MC as the mp3 for that particular podcast.  In other words, I now have 3-4 days of short text files named something like "2007-07-03 Today in Music History for 07-03-2007.mp3" instead of the actual MP3s.  Previously these downloads would have failed.  Now they succeed and I don't have any way of getting the real mp3 into MC via the podcast interface.  MC thinks the podcast downloaded successfully, so deleting it won't help.  I can download and import them manually, but I would expect MC to handle the errors for me. 

John,

This behavior is back in 12.0.279.  One of my feeds (http://www.podcastrant.com/RSS/me_and_the_bean.xml) went offline for a couple of weeks.  When it returned, MC tried to download episodes.  After a couple of retries the download succeeded, but the files were only 1K.  If I open up the mp3s in a text editor.  They are text files with the html for a 404 error.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to provide more information or help in any othe way.  Thanks!

[John Gateley]

Thanks Tim, I'll check it out....

j

[BartMan01]

I actually LIKE the fact that you can see the text only entries.  The better podcasting software that I have used in the past had that ability.  Many times important notes or messages are added to the feed, and if you can't see them then you miss it.  It would be nice if they were handled as just 'informational' entries and MC didn't try to actually download them as mp3 files.