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Author Topic: Podcasts  (Read 1440 times)

6233638

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Podcasts
« on: July 17, 2013, 06:00:25 pm »

I haven't really been using Media Center for Podcasts until recently, but a few changes that would be nice:

1. Tiles view seems to make the most sense for podcasts; it clearly separates each episode, the multi-line view is a lot easier to read, and it could show off an episode's unique art, if it's a podcast which does that. (actually I'm not currently subscribed to a feed that does this, so I haven't checked whether that works) But tile view is huge. It only needs to be about 1/3 the height it currently is. Dynamically scaling to the height of the text would be a nice touch.

2. There's no indicator in any view but "details" which tells me whether I have downloaded an episode, and whether or not it has been listened to, or what my progress currently is with it.

3. It's related to #2, but being able to group by "Episode Status" would probably make the lists a lot easier to parse as well.

4. It would be nice if YouTube subscriptions worked in MC19.

5. Could the "Home" section be replaced with the "Downloaded Podcasts" section instead? Actually, I wouldn't mind removing that entirely - unless you plan on expanding it.
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MrC

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Re: Podcasts
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2013, 06:43:20 pm »

Did you know you can create a view that shows your podcasts?

Try this.  Create a new Categories view, and add

Show Categories in this order:
   Artist
   Name

Set rules for file display:
    Feed URL is not empty

(or you can use Genre=Podcast)

Modifiers:
    Limit Database to All

Configure away.  

Still, I think these relic areas could use some work, but I view them as mostly utilitarian, and use nicer views to show the shows the way I want to see them.
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6233638

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Re: Podcasts
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2013, 07:19:59 pm »

I did, thanks.

I have video and audio subscriptions, so it makes more sense for me to keep podcasts in their own section. Then video can be left for Movies/TV, and audio can be for music.
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JustinChase

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Re: Podcasts
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2013, 04:00:28 pm »

While we're on the topic, and MC19 is open to change, I want to reiterate my request to allow me to write to 'podcast only' tags.  one example is when I can no longer see old episodes with MC, but they are available from the website.  i can download them, but it's way too much work to try to use another tagging program to change the tags to ones that MC will recognize as Podcasts from that series, so they have to be viewed and maintained separately.

Also, some podcasts keep getting 'downloaded' and i end up with 3, 4, 5 or 6 'versions' of one podcast.  I've deleted the duplicates several times, but they eventually just start building back up again.

Podcasts haven't gotten much attention for several versions, and I honestly don't use them that much to push too hard for changes, but if they may get some love this version, I might as well remind of the shortfalls I'd like to see addressed.

If 'love is in the air' on this, I can post details as necessary.
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6233638

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Re: Podcasts
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2013, 04:51:12 pm »



It would be really nice if we could group by status. I spent a while thinking that Media Center had not updated the feed, only to realize that it's because the latest file was not showing at the top of the list.

It seems to be a low priority, but I think Media Center's podcast interface could use a lot of work, and some of that could also carry over to television shows and other aspects of the interface.

There's no clear indicator of whether a podcast episode is new, has been downloaded, or partially played.
In iTunes, they make it very clear whether it's a new episode or not:


Is it possible to have an expression that will display an image in the field?
There seem to be a number of "special" fields in some views that can do this, such as [Image (small thumbnail)]
If I could even have an expression which only displayed this thumbnail if the podcast has been downloaded, that would make things a lot better.
Better still, if I could have an expression that loaded an external image.
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