foo_podcatcher Options

[nausea]

This is a component for subscribing to, downloading, and playing podcasts in foobar2000.

Get versions 0.1.2 (beta) and 0.2.1 (beta) here: download foo_podcatcher

To manage your podcast subscriptions open the Podcatcher UI from the View->Podcatch Manager menu. Here you can add new feed URLs and create playlists. The component will parse RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds.

In the preferences you can set the download path and the time period over which to download from each feed automatically. The component will check for new podcasts 15 seconds after foobar2000 starts and then again every 60 minutes.

Known issue for 0.1.6+: Group headings don't respect UI colours and fonts reliably.

Recent changes:

• 0.2.0: Import and export OPML feed lists. (Hold the shift key when opening the foobar2000 File menu to see the hidden import/export menu options.)
• 0.2.0: Create filter-based Podcatcher autoplaylists. (First filter the Feed Manager dialog by assigning a keyboard shortcut to the hidden 'Filter Podcatcher Feed Manager' main-menu command, and then click 'P'.)
• 0.2.0: Backend now uses a database, meaning that if there is a crash, your feeds' and casts' statuses are not lost to the mists of time.
• 0.2.1: Fix for potential crash when updating feeds.

Anyway, let me know if you find any problems, and post any feeds which don't seem to work.

Note for 0.2.x - this version has major changes to the way that feed and cast statuses are stored, so it is possible and likely that stability has regressed. As always, help me help you by submitting those crash reports!

This post has been edited by nausea: Jan 8 2011, 22:54

[thecircusfreak]

It works!
I also like the ability of playing the files without downloading em, is sth I always needed.

Nausea, all the three pluigns of YOURS are AWESOME. Muchas gracias!

This post has been edited by thecircusfreak: Jan 31 2009, 18:41

[ojdo]

Great plugin!

A bug report: The podcatcher UI seems to have problems with umlauts (ä,ö,ü) and probably other special characters in podcast titles. Names are truncated just before their occurence. Example feed

[thecircusfreak]

Some feedback:
-The time you create the podcast playlist, the first song you ll play will have its seek bar disabled.
-If you remove a subscription you cant readd it.
-If oyu delete a track, you cant redownload it. On updates, podcatcher should check if downloaded files do exist.

And a little feature request although I undrstand this is just an alpha, an option to write published date in a file tag would be great!

[lyh]

how to delete the program list? I remove the feed,but the programs list of the feed on the right side still exist.

and I download the mp3 files,but it download the file only 50k,but the file is 12M.

It is so good. woo

This post has been edited by lyh: Feb 1 2009, 16:55

[predator29]

u roxx mate!

the greatest plugin ever

a little feedback, to what i've just runed:
1) it started to auto download the episodes only after i've added a new feed
2) the url type feed:// isn't supported. i've changed it to http:// and it did work. (the feed is rss2, so it should be)

except these i have not found any bugs.

This post has been edited by predator29: Feb 1 2009, 10:50

[nausea]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I've released a quick update with a few fixes. More will follow!

and I download the mp3 files,but it download the file only 50k,but the file is 12M.

Is this with all feeds? If not could you post an example feed which has the problem. Thanks.

1) it started to auto download the episodes only after i've added a new feed
2) the url type feed:// isn't supported. i've changed it to http:// and it did work. (the feed is rss2, so it should be)

1) I guess this was after the first run, when you had to set the download directory. The items are still in the queue so you can trigger the download by updating the podcasts. I'll make this more elegant at some point...
2) Do you have an example podcast which uses feed:// "protocol"?

[nausea]

A bug report: The podcatcher UI seems to have problems with umlauts (ä,ö,ü) and probably other special characters in podcast titles. Names are truncated just before their occurence. Example feed

This was because of the encoding of the feed. It seems to work for the example feed now. Let me know if you come across any others with similar problems. It's easy to not notice character encoding problems when everything you listen to is in English...

[predator29]

1) I guess this was after the first run, when you had to set the download directory. The items are still in the queue so you can trigger the download by updating the podcasts. I'll make this more elegant at some point...

Yes, it was after the first run.

2) Do you have an example podcast which uses feed:// "protocol"?

Sure, here are some: http://tilos.hu/podcast/
All of those are rss2, only the url type is different. Actually it works, if you change the url to http://

[El Noire]

Great plugin! I just did what the author recommended, put the Podcast Path to the "Podcast" folder (I created) in my library (D:/Music/Podcast) and created an autoplaylist "Podcast" (* HAS podcast) and everything turned out fine I noticed the downloaded music files (I only subscribed to audio-podcasts) all have embedded art so I will try to display those in the Curacao elpplaylist ^^ Thanks for the great work!

[wortels]

Can you make it so that the plugin updates the playlist automatically even if not downloading podcasts? I would like to stream podcasts instead

[nausea]

Version 0.0.3 released. Main change is to the downloading UI. Now uses notification area to inform about new podcasts, downloads, etc. You can see the download progress of individual items in the Podcast Manager UI.

aliumalik: automatically updating playlists is on the TODO list for the next version.

predator29: I'll also look at the feed:// issue. As you say they work if you change the url to http:// so it should be easy...

[--pv--]

aliumalik: automatically updating playlists is on the TODO list for the next version.

Great. Would it even be possible to add ability to add an episode to the playlist after double clicking it in the list and even better navigating to the corresponding list item using keyboard and pressing enter key? Potcast manager window seems to be great it lists all the episodes. For me it would be nice to review that list and add to the playlist episodes I like. Or if playlist will be generated and streaming will be possible then I can let the plugin to generate the playlist and then remove the episodes I don't want to listen to.

thanks I love this plugin.

[2E7AH]

"remove selected" button removes only one item although selects many in podcatcher

few suggestions:
one more display column: <description> element
maybe sort columns if title column is clicked
access to information in columns, at least ability to copy

one note: i had to rename .m4b extension to .m4a to be able to play the file (but that has nothing to do with this component, although it stores the info about it as .m4b so when creating playlist it of course looks for .m4b)

thanks

[predator29]

i'm not sitting in front of my box, but i have a question. correct me if i'm wrong, but it came to my mind, if i delete a file in a file manager, does this plugin updates the status of the file to "not downloaded"? if it does, then pardon me but if it doesn't than i would like to see this feature

[nausea]

i'm not sitting in front of my box, but i have a question. correct me if i'm wrong, but it came to my mind, if i delete a file in a file manager, does this plugin updates the status of the file to "not downloaded"? if it does, then pardon me but if it doesn't than i would like to see this feature

It updates it to "deleted", and you should be able to re-download it manually.

[bellingman]

Something is seriously wrong here...

I set the download folder under Library->Preferences->Tools-Podcatcher, then ran View->Podcast Manager to load a podcast. I entered the podcast URL and clicked Subscribe... and nothing happens. The bottom panes don't get populated, nothing.

I tried with the following three URLs, same result. Restarting... nothing. Clicking every button on the page... nothing.

http://www.onthemedia.org/index.xml
http://pointofinquiry.libsyn.com/rss
http://carollaradio.com/feed/

What am I doing wrong?

[Jonas Nyrup]

#bellingsman
Alle three feeds works for me.
It might takes a few seconds after you click suscribe before a windows pops up asking you to confirm the suscription.

#nausea
I don't know if I'm doing anything wrong, but I can't remove more than one file* at a time. *all those files in the right column in podcatch manager
futhermore, when I click on a random place in the left column, I can see files from earlier deleted feeds.

This post has been edited by Jonas Nyrup: Mar 3 2009, 23:32

[bellingman]

Not for me. No matter how long I wait, nothing happens.

[bellingman]

I see the problem now: it does not recognize my proxy server settings. When I disconnected from my corporate network it works normally.

So I guess this is a feature request: please recognize the proxy settings as set in Windows Internet Options and prompt for authentication (as iTunes does, for example) or add configuration fields for the proxy server address, port, and username/password.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by bellingman: Mar 13 2009, 23:03

[David Heath]

Has anyone tried combining this with some kind of custom column which monitors whether you've played the track or not? One thing I like about iTunes is that it checks whether you've played the track, and it also picks up from where you've left off if you do happen to start it but then need to pause or play another track. I don't suppose a custom column which does the monitoring would be too difficult, but I'm not too sure about how to go about it.

I really like the component, but I think that the key in using it effectively is with a well-designed playlist.

This post has been edited by David Heath: Mar 12 2009, 14:05

[Jleagle]

Can anyone explain why this podcast wont work?

http://www.zen54064.zen.co.uk/Hospital%20R...Podcast%201.xml

Thank you.

[nausea]

Can anyone explain why this podcast wont work?

The feed contains playlists (rather than mp3s or similar), and they aren't marked as type "audio", so the component ignores them. I'll have a think about how to handle this situation. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Jleagle]

Thanks alot, id love to uninstall iTunes and use this instead!

[wortels]

nausea did you get my PM?