Bugzilla – Bug 9450
Provide UI for managing unplayed and partially played podcasts
Last modified: 2013-06-10 14:30:02 UTC
(suggestion initially from http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=52098) Podcasts aren't designed to be played in the same way as music - it is rare that you'd want to hear the same episode a second time. With that in mind I think there is some definite scope to improve the way podcast episodes are presented to the user. When selecting a podcast, the normal requirement is "have any new episodes been released since the last one I listened to?" It isn't too bad if you're in the habit of catching up with a podcast each week (assuming that's how often it is released), as you just choose the top one and play it. If you aren't that disciplined (or don't always have the time), there is no easy way to continue from where you left off. One of the recent podcasts I have discovered has over 60 episodes, and I'm gradually working my way through them only slightly faster than they're being released. This generally requires much trial and error before working out which one is next. I've even started noting down where I'm up to on bits of paper, but this seems really wrong :-). I'm suggesting that it would be very useful to have a way to easily see and select just the previously unheard episodes of a podcast. The starting point in improving this situation is probably to define what is meant by a "played" episode. I suggest that it could be if something like the last minute/10% of the episode has been played. I believe Slimscrobbler must have similar functionality to decide when a track has been played enough to log the details, so maybe this could be re-used. The second part would be to decide how to deliver/display the episodes in a way that uses this information, thus making it easier for a user to choose the episode they are most likely to want to play next. How about an additional menu level that has menus of "Not Played", "Played" (though this one isn't really needed) and "All"? Additionally, it would be very useful to remember where an individual podcast episode has been played up to. Many podcasts are quite long. Some of mine are over an hour in length, and I don't always get the chance to listen to all of an episode in one go. It would be great if the "played up to" position could be remembered. A "resume last episode" option option could be used to utilise this, though I'd suggest default behaviour for playing podcast episodes should be to just resume from where playback previously stopped. (This is somewhat less important to me than the "played" memory and might be trickier to code, but it would still be useful.) I'm not a programmer, but I do have the germ of an idea how this information might be managed: For each podcast, store a file called something like <podcast name>_unplayed.xml. This should hold the ID of the most recent podcast episode separately, and a list of all unplayed episodes so far, along with a "bookmark" time for each one. This file would be created when a podcast is added - all the episode URLs (and date maybe?) would be stripped out from the relevant rss file and put in this new file, along with the id of the latest one held separately. Each time the user navigates to a podcast, SC should do the following: 1. Compare the latest list of episodes to the "unplayed" file...... 2. If there are any episodes in "unplayed" that are no longer in the latest episode list file, remove them from "unplayed" (it's too late to play them now - they've gone) 3. If there are any new episodes in the list (later than the most recent episode id), add them to the unplayed file with a "bookmark" time of 00:00 and update the most recent episode id. 4. Dynamically build a selectable list of episodes under "Not Played" based on the contents of the "unplayed" file. 5. When a user selects an episode from this list, start playback at the "bookmark" time (though it might be useful to give some easy mechanism to start it from the beginning). 6. If any episode has been played through to the end, remove it from the "unplayed" file. If it is stopped early, update its "how far" timestamp. I hope that makes some sense! I'm obviously more than happy to discuss any way this could be fully or just partly achieved, and am very happy to test any code.
I'd like to see some better handling of podcasts, but I'm not a big user of SqueezeCenter so I don't know how this could be tracked. Perhaps some additional functionality added to squeezenetwork would work. It is also possible that some more information could be extracted from the podcasts, especially if they are obtained by an RSS feed. The standard format has a date published which could be displayed along with the title.
Targeting Enhancement bugs
The last played portion of each podcast is the biggest one for me. I have found that not having that all but makes podcasts useless for me on my squeezebox since I seldom have the entire 1-3 hours that my podcasts take.
I think part of the idea (bookmarks) holds also true for normal mp3 playback (especially if on receiver is used by multiple persons). I like to listen to audio books (some files have >1h play time). I would like to stop and bookmark the spot. Then my wife can listen to whatever. Next day I can start the audio book from the bookmark and keep listening. It would be great if bookmarks could be supported in the future and not just for podcasts (preferable having the title tag of the bookmarked file or podcast :), and the date it was created in the name).
Add one for the bookmarking of audio books. This is much more important now that the Boom is out - an obvious use of the Boom is for audio books, and with the current system these are not useable in SC. Ideas could include: Use of user-input genres (Podcast, Audio book, Lecture...) as 'bookmarkable albums', which by default create some kind of file that records the play history, and recommences play from where it left off. A system of bookmarkable playlists, where the user creates the playlist, but it works as above rather than as a normal playlist. For Podcasts, the bookmarkable playlist idea could be used to create smart playlists, which add any new files that fulfil the playlist criteria (artist, album, genre, folder etc) on to the playlist.
I too add to this, bookmarks would be great. I listen to both podcasts and audiobooks and they would work for me there. I would hate for them to be restricted to a genre. I also may be listening my through a playlist and get side tracked listen to another. I'd like to bookmark through a playlist as well. So ideally we should be able to bookmark, the song within a playlist. and keep them in like a favourites menu. to call back at a later time. Keeping both the song position within the track and the playlist position. Kind regards, Vol
Particularly interested in the bookmark function to resume long poscasts.
And another vote for the bookmark function for both podcasts and audiobooks
Another vote for this. I would initially priotise "remember playback position" or bookmark. For files tagged Audiobooks and podcasts - this could be default behaviour.
If anyone in the community wants to provide a patch that would be a good start :)
Yes, bookmarks are very important for both podcasts and audio books.
Most def would like this for Audio Books & Podcasts
The new plugin in 7.8 now keeps track of your listening progress and allows to continue playback where you left. In order to get this feature you need to enable the Podcast plugin in latest LMS 7.8 and manage your podcasts in LMS, not mysb.com.