Managing Podcasts

[sdog]

I've got a Fuze for two days now, while it sounds quite well and is a nice device, i'm quite in trouble with the core functionality i need it for.

I synchronize podcasts with gPodder, i usually listen to about 20 to 40 a day, with roughly 60 on the device. When i'm on the desktop i listen to podcasts directly from the computer. I use the Fuze with M

I ran into some difficulties:

- Podcasts are not marked as played, and thus not deleted when synchronizing
- I haven't managed to put Podcasts into any playlist.
- Podcasts are stored in a seemingly disorganised manner, not sorted by the channel but by the authors i think. Things are even worse as only a short part of every entry is visible in the menu.
- Even after marking a podcast as 'played' in gPodder, synchronizing does NOT remove it from the Fuze.


A brief search in this forum brought only rather brusque answers to others with similar issues, and completely impractical suggestions like deleting podcasts manually, changing their id3s etc.

As i anticipate those answers: Spotting the 20 podcasts played from a list with 60 cryptic filenames is not really easy.


Conclusion: Is there any way to use podcasts on the Fuze in a reasonable and automated way. Do you have established methods to work around those shortcommings. Is there other software, or is using MTP mode (possible?) a solution?

[sdog]

Since someone might stumble over this in google, i'll post my progress here. I shall be quite thankfull for any hint or help still!

It seems that rockbox (RB) might be the solution. I gave up because of earlier problems with usb, mentioned below. However a workaround exists, by connecting the shut-off device to the computer, the original firmware (OF) will boot and the device can be accessed.

Rockbox should address the playlist shortcommings (not tested yet), has better display (set database update to automatically) and there might be a way to synchronise properly with gPodder.

From gPodder FAQ:

How can I keep track of podcast episodes that I've listened to on my Rockbox-based media player?

From gPodder do the following:

From the preferences window click on the "Advanced" button
Set the following property to True (double click on it):
mp3_player_use_scrobbler_log
In Rockbox you have to enable scrobbling:

Go to: Settings-->General Settings-->Playback-->Last.fm Log
Set it to "Yes"
After you've listened to some podcasts on your media player you can sync with gPodder and the episodes you've listened to will be marked as played.

Note: This might not work for files you've downloaded before enabling the "update_tags" feature or if gPodder isn't able to re-tag specific files.

Rockbox was indeed saving a .scrobbler.log, containing the podcasts. It is stored in the root directory. Synchronizing in gPodder did not show any result.

MSC dir for podcasts in gPodder was set to PODCASTS and to root tested.

Possible issues:
- connecting in RB mode does not work (Fuze v2), USB support not available at the moment.*
- tested podcasts not compatbile
- getting it wrong

Update
I successfully managed to get a nature podcast marked as played. The podcasts tested before were likely not suitable for the .scrobbler.log method.

Update 2
A hook script for gPodder by Bernd Schlapsi might fix this for some podcasts. (Also interesting for OF users might be a discussion on automatically removing the 'podcast' tag on download, to allow playback as music files (with playlists)(gPodder hook script)
https://bugs.gpodder.org/show_bug.cgi?id=533

* tested dfkt's build with usb patch. Did not work on ubuntu 10.10, fuze froze, disconnect and reboot necessary. lsusb briefly showed the device, repeating the command caused lsusb to hang, after disconnecting lsusb became responsive again.

[Jethro]

Originally Posted by sdog

As i anticipate those answers: Spotting the 20 podcasts played from a list with 60 cryptic filenames is not really easy.

You can eliminate the cryptic filenames by changing them to Date_Title. The default basename, is a train wreck. I started a new gPodder thread here. I don't think the Sansa tags "played podcasts", since no one seems to be able to auto remove them with any software. The only thing that has worked so far is to checkbox mp3_player_delete_played, and on_sync_mark_played. This deletes all episodes added to the player each time you connect with the PC. Not much help I know, but that's all I've figured out so far.

[sdog]

I don't think the Sansa tags "played podcasts", since no one seems to be able to auto remove them with any software.

It works for me reliably now, to autoremove played episodes. The trick is in the quote from rockbox faq, in my previous message. gpodder can analyse the lastfm log file rockbox is producing.

The hook script mentioned above also works very well to fix id3 tags of podcasts during download.

Except some odd episodes from time to time, rockbox+gpodder works very reliably now in marking old episodes and removing them automatically from the fuze.

I shoul also add, it's quite easy to change the display of the database, to use rockbox's internal play count to mark episodes in the player as played.


Here are the relevant lines to do this in tagnavi_custom.config:

# Basic format declarations
%format "fmt_podcast"       "%02d %02d:%02d %s" entryage Lm Ls title %strip = "2"
%format "fmt_podcast2"       "%02d %02d:%02d %s" entryage Lm Ls title %sort = "inverse" 

# Define the title of the main menu
%menu_start "custom" "Podcasts"
"Podcast (new)" -> album ? filename ~ "/PODCAST" & playcount == "0"-> title = "fmt_podcast" ? filename ~ "/PODCAST" & playcount == "0"
"Podcast (old)" -> title = "fmt_podcast" ? filename ~ "/PODCAST" & playcount != "0"
"Podcast (short)" -> title = "fmt_podcast2" ? filename ~ "/PODCAST" & playcount == "0" & Lm <= "12"

to prevent podcasts from obscuring the music library, just ad another conditional for all music entry:

"Artist"   -> artist ? filename ~ "/MUSIC"  -> album  -> title = "fmt_title" ? filename ~ "/MUSIC"

source: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/DataBase


In this case i've used the folder structure, having music in MUSIC and podcasts in PODCASTS, that's not necessary, you can as well use the id3 tag. (best fix it first with the gpodder hook script.)