Looking for a non-gPodder podcast tool - maemo.org

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	silvermountain	2009-06-25 , 21:15
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#1

Short of using gPodder what other podcast-download/management tools are there available for the N810?

I've tried using gPodder (v 0.16.1-2) for a couple of days now but it is simply not a good user experience for me and would love an alternative.

Example of current issues (as I'm open to me and not the application being part of the problem):

1) It is SO slow.. Simply adding a new podcast by a URL is such a time-sink that I'm simply not doing it again.

2) It keeps launching an app up to the status bar. Is there a way for it NOT to do that?

3) When selecting 'Preferences' from the icon in the status bar nothing shows on the screen if you don't have the gPodder screen up. You have to switch to that app and then...you got a window you can't close.

4) When starting up gPodder it takes a good 10 seconds and then it minimizes itself right away to the left panel. Any way to configure that not to happen?

5) More of a guilty-by-association...it integrates with Panucci which has a pretty bad audio quality when playing podcasts on the N810. Someone posted and commented on that the poor sound quality had to do with the program using gstream (sp?). Then again, I could associate it with MediaPlayer which sounds much better so not an issue per se

6) You can't set how many episodes you want to keep. I spend quite a bit of time where I am not connected to the web and often find the value in having multiple episodes available to me.

Am I just missing the settings for the 'issues' above and/or is there an alternative out there that sounds like it would be a better fit?

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.N810 experience: Since 6/2009
My Twenty Favorite OS2008 Applications:
AutoScan, Diablo5 Theme, Dialcentral, DragLock, EmelFM2, FlipClock, gPodder, Headphoned, Knots 2, Maemo Mapper, mPlayer, openNTPD, OpenSSH, Panucci, Personal Launcher, QuickNote, Seqretary, SlideLock, Telescope, YellowNotes

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GeraldKo	2009-06-25 , 22:31
Posts: 1,950 \| Thanked: 1,174 times \| Joined on Jan 2008 @ Seattle, USA	#2

I like gPodder/Pannuci, but Canola also has a podcast client. (My biggest wish for gPodder would be quicker-loading of the program itself, and Canola is even slower.)

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	danramos	2009-06-25 , 23:15
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#3

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Short of using gPodder what other podcast-download/management tools are there available for the N810?

I know the two other popular ways to get podcasts are with Canola (but I really dislike the way Canola manages podcasts) and bashpodder (which is CLI and sort of a kludge, requiring a little bit of coding knowledge and just plain seems plain unweildy for any ordinary user when things don't go 100% right).

Originally Posted by silvermountain

I've tried using gPodder (v 0.16.1-2) for a couple of days now but it is simply not a good user experience for me and would love an alternative.

Although I rather like gpodder and it serves me well, I can understand why you wouldn't want to use it. There are lots of things that would be better done with a 100% new program written for maemo to do podcast aggregation.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Example of current issues (as I'm open to me and not the application being part of the problem):

1) It is SO slow.. Simply adding a new podcast by a URL is such a time-sink that I'm simply not doing it again.

Yep. It's slow. I'd bet a brand new, maemo-specific optimized application would fix that. That is... a simple one, feature rich but not heavily burdoned with animation and fancy graphics like Canola. bashpodder shines in this category, at least.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

2) It keeps launching an app up to the status bar. Is there a way for it NOT to do that?

Yes! In gpodder, to go the drop-down menu and choose 'Podcasts' then 'Preferences' and remove the checkmark beside 'Show icon in status area'.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

3) When selecting 'Preferences' from the icon in the status bar nothing shows on the screen if you don't have the gPodder screen up. You have to switch to that app and then...you got a window you can't close.

That sounds like a plain old bug, period. If I ever get my arse in gear, it would be one to put up on the bug site. At any rate, I'd just avoid the status bar icon altogether and turn it off.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

4) When starting up gPodder it takes a good 10 seconds and then it minimizes itself right away to the left panel. Any way to configure that not to happen?

Hmm... that's not a behavior I've seen at all. Maybe try this: Go to the drop-down menu, choose 'Podcasts', then 'Preferences' and tap 'Advanced...', start entering in the word 'mini' and make sure there is no checkmark next to 'minimize_to_tray'.

Tell me if that works either way--I'm curious about that one, since I'm not seeing it at all.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

5) More of a guilty-by-association...it integrates with Panucci which has a pretty bad audio quality when playing podcasts on the N810. Someone posted and commented on that the poor sound quality had to do with the program using gstream (sp?). Then again, I could associate it with MediaPlayer which sounds much better so not an issue per se

Actually sounds pretty good over here--I've preferred using it with Panucci ever since I started using it. I also tend to use bluetooth as well as speakers and headphones and I'm not noticing any difference in quality except the obvious degradation in quality from using HSP profile bluetooth audio, which is to be expected.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

6) You can't set how many episodes you want to keep. I spend quite a bit of time where I am not connected to the web and often find the value in having multiple episodes available to me.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If you mean tha you don't want them to be able to be deleted, there is a menu option to mark an episode with 'Prohibit deletion' so that it won't be able to be deleted and it remains available. If you mean that you want to be able to archive episodes elsewhere by saving them off, you can tap an episode and choose to 'Save to disk' which lets you save the file off onto another card or a specific path (say SMB).

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Am I just missing the settings for the 'issues' above and/or is there an alternative out there that sounds like it would be a better fit?

It sound to me like maybe you might have fiddled with the defaults a bit and turned on some things that you don't like. At the worst, you can start over with a nice clean configuration by closing it out (you should close gpodder first!), going to the xterm (command line) and typing in the line:
rm ~/.config/gpodder/gpodder.conf

This will remove the config file and allow gpodder, at the next start-up, to generate a brand new config with its defaults.

If you find something better, please let me know--in the meantime, I've tried to do my part and help Thomas Perl and the contributing programmers with improving the application by liberally complaining in bug reports. I feel they've done a brilliant job so far but I can certainly understand the issues and frustrations too.

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	silvermountain	2009-06-25 , 23:37
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#4

Originally Posted by danramos

I know the two other popular ways to get podcasts are with Canola (but I really dislike the way Canola manages podcasts) and bashpodder (which is CLI and sort of a kludge, requiring a little bit of coding knowledge and just plain seems plain unweildy for any ordinary user when things don't go 100% right).

Thanks! Since it won't cost me anything to try them out I'll download both tonight and see how they fit me. Bashpodder seems pretty promising but I'm not sure it does video podcasts.

Originally Posted by danramos

Yes! In gpodder, to go the drop-down menu and choose 'Podcasts' then 'Preferences' and remove the checkmark beside 'Show icon in status area'.

Sweet! That worked great. Thanks again!

Originally Posted by danramos

Hmm... that's not a behavior I've seen at all. Maybe try this: Go to the drop-down menu, choose 'Podcasts', then 'Preferences' and tap 'Advanced...', start entering in the word 'mini' and make sure there is no checkmark next to 'minimize_to_tray'.

Tell me if that works either way--I'm curious about that one, since I'm not seeing it at all.

I opened gPodder a few more times just to ensure I wasn't wrong but every times it opens up...I see it for split second and then it minimizes over to the left panel.

I double-checked and minimize_to_tray is not checked. I toggled it on..closed the app...went back and toggled it off...but same thing happens every time I open the app. Weird.

Originally Posted by danramos

Actually sounds pretty good over here--I've preferred using it with Panucci ever since I started using it. I also tend to use bluetooth as well as speakers and headphones and I'm not noticing any difference in quality except the obvious degradation in quality from using HSP profile bluetooth audio, which is to be expected.

Not sure how to provide more 'backup' for this one

I downloaded two podcasts - both have a hissing sound in the background (albeit rather faint) - but that sound is gone when listening either through N810's media player or on my Zune MP3 player. I even had the girlfriend do a 'blind' test of it and she picked out the hissing in a matter of seconds when I played through Panucci.

Originally Posted by danramos

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If you mean tha you don't want them to be able to be deleted, there is a menu option to mark an episode with 'Prohibit deletion' so that it won't be able to be deleted and it remains available. If you mean that you want to be able to archive episodes elsewhere by saving them off, you can tap an episode and choose to 'Save to disk' which lets you save the file off onto another card or a specific path (say SMB).

Basically a setting that would download and always keep the latest X numbers of episodes of a podcast. Zune's marketplace works that way and I assume/guess iTunes does as well?

Thanks again for your help!
I'll give bashpodder a try (I checked out Canola while typing this and it's way to 'heavy'/big for what I want.

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	danramos	2009-06-26 , 00:03
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#5

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Thanks! Since it won't cost me anything to try them out I'll download both tonight and see how they fit me. Bashpodder seems pretty promising but I'm not sure it does video podcasts.

No problem!

As for bashpodder, if it doesn't already do mp4 or avi, you can make it do so by editing the shell script and telling it to grab them. That's part of the upside: flexibility, but the downside being it's more than the casual user might understand to do.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

I opened gPodder a few more times just to ensure I wasn't wrong but every times it opens up...I see it for split second and then it minimizes over to the left panel.

I double-checked and minimize_to_tray is not checked. I toggled it on..closed the app...went back and toggled it off...but same thing happens every time I open the app. Weird.

Boggling! Try that little trick with starting over with a new config, maybe. (Rather than delete it, maybe rename the file so you can always restore it later if you want to bring back your old settings... Like so..

mv ~/.config/gpodder.conf ~/gpodder.conf.bak

then later restore it, if you don't like what defaults have done..

mv ~/gpodder.conf.bak ~/.config/gpodder.conf

Like that.)

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Not sure how to provide more 'backup' for this one I downloaded two podcasts - both have a hissing sound in the background (albeit rather faint) - but that sound is gone when listening either through N810's media player or on my Zune MP3 player. I even had the girlfriend do a 'blind' test of it and she picked out the hissing in a matter of seconds when I played through Panucci.

Yeah, that sounds pretty definitive. I'm not sure what to say--maybe it's because I have an N800 and it doesn't do that? Differences in hardware? I saw the posting in the other thread, so I'll leave it to that thread.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Basically a setting that would download and always keep the latest X numbers of episodes of a podcast. Zune's marketplace works that way and I assume/guess iTunes does as well?

OH! Yeah, there's that too! Go to the drop-down menu, 'Podcasts', 'Preferences', 'Advanced...', start typing 'per' and you can set the number to keep with the 'max_episodes_per_feed' setting.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Thanks again for your help!
I'll give bashpodder a try (I checked out Canola while typing this and it's way to 'heavy'/big for what I want.

No problem! Glad I'm resolving a bunch of these little issues for you and welcome to the podcast listening world!

Mind if I SHAMELESSLY plug my own podcast? I cohost the Black Rock Lost Podcast (we go over theories about the TV show 'Lost' on ABC). If you dont' watch the show, you won't be interested but if you do, it might particularly be interesting right now since we're re-watching the entire series to prepare for the final season coming up in January. You can catch us at http://blackrockpodcast.blogspot.com/

I started to try to do a Linux gadgets podcast and I REALLY want to restart it but I'm finding that I'm lacking time and money to do so (takes money to buy stuff and to have the time when I'm not earning money.. heh). Aw well. Someday.

OK.. enough shamelessness.

Good luck!!

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	silvermountain	2009-06-26 , 01:11
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#6

Thanks for all the great info again.

I uninstalled gPodder and re-installed it. Without changing anything I open it up and...it immediately minimizes to the left pane (where I can click it and it opens up full). Weird..

You can pretty much see what apps I got installed here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=29870

Not sure if any of them can cause a conflict.
(And I've tried launching gPodder from the Extras folder, from Personal Menu AND from Personal Launcher

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Laughing Man	2009-06-26 , 01:15
Posts: 4,556 \| Thanked: 1,624 times \| Joined on Dec 2007	#7

I don't have the minimize issue but it is slow to start. But then again I have 22+ podcasts I'm subscribed too.

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	silvermountain	2009-06-26 , 06:21
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#8

Finally found it...I, for some reason, had 'start_iconized' flagged.

Un-checking that stops the auto-minimizing.

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	silvermountain	2009-06-26 , 06:25
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#9

Originally Posted by danramos

No problem!

OH! Yeah, there's that too! Go to the drop-down menu, 'Podcasts', 'Preferences', 'Advanced...', start typing 'per' and you can set the number to keep with the 'max_episodes_per_feed' setting.

Hm, are you sure this does what I asked for? It seems more of a display setting for how many episodes per feed will be displayed in gPodder - rather than 'automatically download the latest X un-heard episodes'

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	danramos	2009-06-26 , 08:12
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#10

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Hm, are you sure this does what I asked for? It seems more of a display setting for how many episodes per feed will be displayed in gPodder - rather than 'automatically download the latest X un-heard episodes'

Oh nono.. I see what you're saying. No, what it does is it sets up a threshold for a MAXIMUM number of podcasts to retain. It doesn't automatically download x number of podcasts from a feed. Naw--for that, you have to individually tap the podcast and then tap 'Download', even if there's a bunch.

Used to be that you could swipe your finger down a bunch of them and then when you let go, you could tap 'download to get a whole bunch at the same time--but ever since Thomas went to the sliding lists that you scroll by swiping your finger, that's no longer possible. I seem to recall that he mentioned working on a good way to make it so that you can select a set of podcasts to perform operations (like download, delete, play, etc.). I haven't heard anything new on that front in a long time, though. Of course, it could be that I entirely wishfully dreamed it up during a particularly lucid night of sleep.

Congrats on finding the iconizing option that was causing you pain! I'm not sure why you expected uninstalling and reinstalling would help, though. Uninstalling shouldn't touch your home directory (config files).. even if you uninstall gpodder, the config files will still sit in your home directory (since the package manager didn't put them there).