[General Topics] Menneisyys:
If (any kind of) mass playback is supported, audio / video distinction (unattended “Commute mode“ as referred to by FeederReader?): when you, for example, jog and, therefore, can’t watch the screen of your handset, in a mass playback mode, distinction between audio-only and video content can be highly useful. This way, you can be sure no video will be played back while in mass playback mode; only audio.

Mass deletion of all enclosures? If possible, can you do this on both globally and just in an individual channel?: in addition to mass playback, mass deletion can also be highly useful. Here, I elaborate on both global and in-one-feed mass deletion capabilities.

Filename naming conventions (for quick file system-level lookup, mass playback queuing from external players, deletion etc.): there are two approaches podcatcher applications use when downloading streams (one of them, BeyondPod, also supports both): either keep their original names (in some cases, adding a unique, machine-generated trailer/header to make sure no accidental overwriting will occur) or use a fully machine-generated name, mostly consisting of running indexes.

Both approaches have advantages. If you keep the original podcast filenames (particularly if you do this in separate, feed-specific subdirectories in the file system), you won’t need to do any lookup to find out what a given podcast really is. Also, queuing podcasts for mass playback (particularly if they’re in a separate subdirectory) becomes far easier. However, it’s prone to the overwriting problem, which may be particularly an issue with, in this regard, not very well written applications like

If you only have index-based and/generated random indexes, accidental overwriting won’t even occur. However, you may have a hard time identifying the podcasts in the file system, should you want to access them in an external media player without firing up the podcatch/caster application.

Of course, there are combined solutions as well; for example, Egress uses both a unique, random leading string to make sure no overwriting will take place and, after this, the original filename follows.

Compatibility with some real feeds: MoDaCo: in this pretty large group, I’ve presented some real-world test results on whether these podcast/catcher applications are compliant with some real-world, popular podcasts. The first of the test is MoDaCo’s, which causes some problems to, for example, Pocket Player (the fix is promised for the next version). It’s, otherwise, a pretty usual MP3 podcast. CorePlayer, which, as of version 1.2.5, has still pretty bad RSS feed parsing capabilities, is fully incompatible with this feed.

1Src Palm-powered Podcast (MP3): another usual MP3 podcast, no real catches here, except for Skookum, which can’t download more than one podcast a time, as it erroneously assumes the filename being “redirect.mp3”, which results in downloading subsequent episodes overwriting previous downloads.

Heart of Space (Mp3): another pretty usual feed. The only podcaster not compatible with it is NewsGator Go! for Mobiles: while it can download it, it can’t invoke an external app to play it back. This is a pretty common issue with NewsGator Go! for Mobiles, several other feeds are also suffering from this problem.

SpaceMusic Archive (MP3) and (Current) SpaceMusic : no problems at all with any of the apps.

Radio 538 (AAC-LC) : now, this is a problematic feed causing issues with many apps. For example, CorePlayer has problems with the 080804 issue, while the other episodes (for example, 080811) work just fine.

Also note that it isn’t an MP3 podcast but an AAC-LC one. Therefore, many podcasting/catching apps are simply unable to play it back – or, for that matter, even retrieve it.

Classic Animation (H.264 Baseline video): switching to videos, Classic Animation is a great source of old cartoons. They have their stuff in H.264 baseline format, which means great compatibility with a lot of multimedia players (as opposed to more advanced H.264 formats).

It worked with most podcasters, except for NewsGator Go! for Mobiles, which exhibited the same trailing bug as with a lot of other feeds.

X’Play’s Daily Video Podcast : these videos are high-res (VGA, 640*480) and use a more advanced, non-baseline H.264 format meaning very few players (most importantly, CorePlayer on all mobile platforms except BlackBerry) will be able to play them back.

Tagesschau Podcast (MP3): these MP3 files are the plain audio tracks of the Tagesschau video programs. They’re different from the previous titles (but not the original “video” versions) in that they have a much more complicated feed URL. Probably this is what makes these feeds inaccessible for several podcatcher/caster apps (CorePlayer, Hubdog and the BlackBerry version of AudioBay).

Tagesschau Video Podcast (MP4 / H.264 baseline): the situation is pretty similar with the original video versions of these programmes.

Other sources of information

A REALLY cool post on desktop podcasting

VoiceIndigo for BlackBerry

What are you using to “podcatch”?

A german list

Another quick news item on the PPCMag article

A 2006 thread: RSS reader with podcast support for TyTn, any suggestions?

Mostly a FeederReader-specific thread

Note that, while some feeds (for example, C&L) offers the capability of accessing two videos from one article, physically, they only hold one enclosure, not two (they only link to two videos). An example screenshot series:

No longer existing or plain weak applications

SmartFeed, an old, still widely known, popular app, has been incorporated into NewsGator in the meantime.

The Windows Mobile version (as of beta3) of the otherwise very nice and famous Doppler is pretty much useless and far inferior to any of the products in the chart. Still, a quick elaboration, should you still want to know why I don’t recommend it.

First, unless you have a lot of built-in storage, in Menu / Options / Settings, you’ll want to change the default podcast download path, \My Documents\My Podcasts. Finally, after a double-click on the feed, select Menu / Download podcast. Trying to update feeds / podcasts has always resulted in constant problems; then, also Aborting download… has stalled and required a manual, forced task kill. Therefore, it seems the only way to download the podcasts is via the built-in Internet Explorer (that is, fully manually – which is in no way recommended; after all, podcatchers exist just in order to avoid doing this), you can manually tap the link after double-tapping an article.

PiP (also see for example THIS) has been discontinued in the meantime.

Pocket Podcasts 1.0 is also pretty weak and requires a desktop-side server; this is why (on purpose) I’ve left it out.