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Podcast subscription support
I have songbird 0.6 and I find it very difficult to subscribe to a podcast. I know there is a button create a subscription. It's working when the blog is only dedicated to music but for more complex website as this one http://atelier.rfi.fr/, it's not working. (On the bottom right of the page you have the possibility of subscribing to a podcast and it's not working)
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Okay, gents and ladies -- speaking HYPOTHETICALLY since there's no guarantee I can actually do this -- but if I could squeeze a few bug fixes into some upcoming release to make podcasting less broken if not more awesome, what would they be? Replies would ideally be links to candidate bugs already in the system, or less ideally links to bugs you filed, or least ideally just your personal opinion.
Before anyone gets too excited, I definitely can't guarantee I'll be able to get you anything at all. In fact, it's likely that it's already too late for next release, but I'll see what (little) I can do.
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Hi Ben, poor POTI soul here. :0)
No, really though, I can't speak to some of your points as I am not a developer. One thing I can vouch for is that your theory of the developers being anti-podcast is really not the case. They do not make the call as to what they code and when unless it's a project they take up in their "free" time as Aus did with the EQ. I'm not in all the meetings so I won't say they don't get a vote but it is not exclusively their decision and I happen to know there was a lot of debate about the switch in priorities. Our priorities are determined by a combination of votes in Bugzilla and Get Satisfaction (which feeds into the Idea Kitchen) as well as user surveys, the needs of our partners and management input on what is best for the direction and future development of the company...i.e. paying the bills! Both klint and Andrew alluded to the fact (thanks guys) that we do have partnerships to honor and a business to run which has to be factored into our decisions.
I think there is a general divergence of opinions when it comes to coding parody features vs. new and innovative features. We all know we need (and want!) the features that we all think should just come standard, but we also want (and need!) to keep focusing on features that can and will generate revenue and set us apart from other players out there. Ultimately we plan to have it all.
With that said, your request for more information is a fair one and I'll do my best to keep the news coming. I'll have to solicit other team members for some of the more technical pieces you're looking for but we'll see what we can do. In the meantime this is an interview with one of our developers who speaks to our direction and priorities which might give you some more insight as to where we are hoping to go: http://howsoftwareisbuilt.com/2009/08...
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Hi!
Whooee, there seems to be some gas on this fire.
I know that many of you in this thread simply can't use Songbird until it has working podcasting support. But it doesn't. Sorry.
Speaking as a developer (and not officially for the company) at least I can shed some light on what's going on here, why podcasting isn't in the next release and how that makes me feel.
First, a little background. I've been working on Songbird since 0.4, and if I remember correctly, fixing up the podcasting support was pretty much the first project I wanted to take on. Since then, I've been personally disappointed as podcasting has slipped from every release one after another. I feel your pain. I am also annoyed. It sucks, and I complain loudly every time this happens. People have come to expect it.
Having sat in on all those engineering and planning meetings (and even having spent a couple weeks getting started on the new podcasting work last month) I can say that we ALL want to fix podcasting. The problem is, it's going to be a hell of a lot of work. There are new dialogs to add, device support to think about, all kinds of issues.
Worse still, a lot of the code that is in Songbird at the moment around podcasting is utterly broken, flawed, or otherwise junky. Fixing it up and making it the way we want has been determined to be a waste of effort. That's why I'm never given a free hand to go fix those bugs you see in Bugzilla. It's just too far gone. Most of that stuff is going to be replaced by a new, shiny podcasting system. You can see the list of podcasting rewrite project tasks filed here:
http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/bugl...[podcast]
That's 77 bugs (as of this writing) not counting any additional intake due to problems we find or other work that needs doing. When we cost our projects, we assign all our bugs a 1, 2, or 3 cost and experience has shown that over a long period we tend to close about 5 points per engineer per week across all projects. That basically means that with the two engineers who were available in Kanye (me and Erik) we weren't going to be able to seal the deal. You can do the math yourself.
The worse news is that the video support work we need in Led Zeppelin is actually much further along and has fewer user interface elements, which are by far the most time consuming and difficult part of creating a consumer application. There simply aren't going to be enough hands on deck next release to get the job done right either. If you can change that, send us patches, or better yet, your resume.
As a company, PoTI plans new features, and we publish our best estimate of when things will come, but they absolutely aren't promises, and when push comes to shove we have to make tough choices and somebody always gets left out. This time (like every time before) podcasting got pushed out. Again. Yes, it hurts, but this isn't a hobby project running out of someone's basement. People's jobs, people's money, and (most significantly) global domination are at stake here.
So, if you can't use Songbird without podcasting support, please accept my personal apology and keep using whatever tool is serving you better. When that day does come, I hope you'll find that we did the job right and built something rock solid.
For everybody else, we're all waiting together.
Now, having said that, I'm going to go back to trying to get these MTP bugs fixed so y'all can have another release.
I'll watch the thread for a bit and answer any questions you have as best I can.
Edit: Oh yeah, I should add -- this thread is so long that wanted to point out that I haven't read all of it, so please take that into consideration and feel free to re-ask me any questions you may have directly.
The company and 6 other people think
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Hi Thomas,
You're right, we don't handle podcasts subscriptions well just yet. The good news is that making our podcast support better is on our list to tackle before the end of '08.
As you can probably tell from the latest release, we've been focusing on improving our performance in the last release, and are adding in some basic music player features in our next release, like album art.
I've included your request in our bug tracking system, so if you want to add yourself to the bug and follow our progress go check out: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
Best,
Ethan
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Once again, we offer opinions, and are attacked on this forum. Truly unbelievable.
It's a forum for opinions on how to improve a product. The developers promised and then chose not to deliver Podcasts. That's their right, and we haven't attacked them, but only have encouraged them to adjust the roadmap to include podcasting, because we are looking for a useful replacement for iTunes.
The developers, to their credit, have responded and we've had a useful discussion. I, for one, am hopeful that this discussion will lead to them reconsider Podcast support. It is NOT, in fact, working in the product. You are welcome to try it, if you'd like. We have not, at any time, been harsh, unlike you. In fact, offering opinions on how to improve software IS contributing. That's how the OpenSource community works, but you clearly don't understand that.
If you have a different opinion on what you'd like in the SongBird, then offer it, but I don't need to hear your attacks on me or others that are asking for PodCast management.
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I first stumbled upon Songbird late last year when looking for a good media player for my computer. I downloaded it, tried it out, and was impressed. It handled the files well, had a good set of plugins, and worked smoothly.
I then deleted it once I realized that podcast support was planned for almost a year later. I came back to take a look, only to find that podcast support was, yet again, ignored.
Actually, ignored is too weak of a word. The developers, after creating and posting a public road map, decided to throw it out the window and work on implementing video instead. Maybe they felt that video was more sexy than podcasts. I'm finding it difficult to see how implementing a full video browser with transcoding and metadata editing is less difficult than reading an RSS or Atom feed and saving the file that is noted in the "enclosure" tag to a predefined directory. Especially since Songbird is "Powered by Mozilla", and Mozilla products can parse RSS/Atom/XML feeds just fine and have been able to do so for some time.
I'm also disappointed that the only real reason that has been put forward by the developers is that "Feature X got more votes." This tells me that, well, podcasting will never be implemented. This issue has been open for one year. If the developers cannot meet their already-written milestones, leave an issue open for a year, and decide to tackle more ambitious projects rather than implement something that iTunes (and Rhythmbox... and Banshee... and WinAmp... and Windows Media Player) can implement, then why should we believe them when the best they have is a vague "planned for a future release?"
But hey. At least I won't have to waste 6 more months waiting for the release where it will be added. The developers have now removed it completely from the roadmap for upcoming releases.
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3 people think
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Either way, at the end of the day, Podcast support isn't a waste, and the developers plan to implement podcasts. if you require them, then there isn't any option but to use another player for now. Songbird is still under heavy development, so the developers know that they can't win EVERY match. I also know that a few of the developers watch podcast's, so I doubt that they took the decision lightly.
But if you look at idea kitchen, CD ripping has twice as many votes. That's fact. That means that twice as many people have voted for CD-Ripping. So hence that's why it certainly makes sense to prioritise it. Ideally, everyone wants everything, but the developers can only go by peoples votes, and the cost of implementing it.
Three months ago I would have said that if you could find enough people to vote up podcasting over CD-ripping, the developers could have changed their priorities, but its probably too late now into the 1.4 development cycle now. Unless you chose to fund some developers willing to implement podcast support (but lets face it, paying for podcast support doesn't make sense).
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I agree with all above who argue for podcast support. I don't have any cds any more so I have no need for cdrip capability - it is useless to me. But I listen to old radio postcasts (amos and andy, johnny dollar, etc.), science shows (quirks and quarks, science friday), short stories (selected shorts and the new yorker podcast), politics (rachel maddow), etc. The possibility of managing podcasts was the sole reason I tried songbird, and the broken implementation was the sole reason I deleted it from my system.
Gpodder and every other podcasting program on linux sucks but all the others solutrions have their problems too.
Some can't manage devices properly. Gpodder changes the name of the podcast file the some indecipherable guid, effectively rendering it unmanageable from the file manager. Gpodder also cannot display all your podcasts in one list, or sort them by date - it always divides them by source, and you have to update your device one-source-at-a-time. You cannot select 10 or 20 files from different sources and say "put these on mydevice." It it terrible, but it is the best of the crappy solutions that are available on linux. Besides, who in their right mind thinks that using two different tools to manage your media files is a good idea?
ITunes does all this flawlessly, but only on Windows and mac. For all the iTunes bashing I see on the songbird lists, it sure seems ironic that nobody can come even close to making as good a product as iTunes.
I was subscribed to this bug report so I would know when this bug got fixed, but that's clearly not going to happen. No problem, I'll just unsubscribe and go buy a mac so I can run iTunes.
I’m frustrated
3 people think
this is one of the best points
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Ben, I would agree that saying that Songbird is ONLY a Podcast software would be a flawed argument, which is why I didn't make it.
Clearly, the developers of SongBird don't see PodCast support as a priority, so I have chosen to make my argument for the importance of this support to encourage them in this direction, because this is what would make SongBird useful to me. They've had a good start. Now add PodCast support, and you've got me. I wouldn't be wasting my time if I wasn't impressed with where SongBird is now, but it's not useful to me without PodCasts.
I bought a car recently, and there were many good candidates, but I bought the one with a back seat big enough for my kids and a trunk big enough for my golf clubs and my baseball coaching equipment. If I didn't meet this criteria, the car would be useless to me.
Others have said that CD ripping is essential. I have no use for this personally, but you don't see me attacking those people for some perceived flawed argument. This is what they need. PodCast support is what I need. It's called collaboration.
Hardly a flawed argument, but I do so enjoy your attacks.
4 people think
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I'm sad as well, but you can understand the decision by looking at the cost of this feature compared to the total cost of development for a Songbird release.
In order to garantee a swift release cycle, Songird developers have to make harsh decision like choosing between two costly features: CDRip or Podcasts, in that case. I suppose that CDRip was requested by more people than the Podcasts.
Have a look at the project definition table here:
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Releases...
I really hope that Podcast will be included in the Led Zep release (although not yet listed in the feature list here for the moment: http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Releases...), and not in a even more "future" release.
3 people think
this is one of the best points
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A year later, mabye... but a lot of things beyond podcasts.
And if you search in Songbird's wiki, you'll find the complete specs for podcasts, ready for development.
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Due to volume, only the 15 most recent replies are being displayed
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Inappropriate?Cannot use podcast subscriptions successfully.
For instance : http://radiofrance-podcast.net/podcas...
I choose File/New Subscription, then copy/paste the RSS link.
I can retrieve the link in my playlist (for instance radiofrance-posdcast.net), but nothing is downloaded, nothing is displayed in corresponding tab...
I cannot explain
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Why RSS subscription does not make mp3 file downloaded?.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Do you have any add ons that can keep track of all of my rss/podcast feeds like i-tunes(which I can't stand)?
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Podcast feed tracker...Replace i-tunes!. -
Inappropriate?This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Subscription /Podcast issues. -
Inappropriate?Subscribing to a feed (e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/notesunde...) via a right click on playlists and 'new subscription'. But this does not work.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Podcast support is buggy.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?RSS feeds do not update.
I have added two subscriptions and found them in my library added under play lists, when left click and select 'update' nothing happens. Is there something I am missing? How do subscriptions work?
I listen to a few new radios channels and enjoy podcasts, RythemBox handles podcasts well and I have thus been favoring it.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
RSS subscriptions useless.
I’m disapointed & confused
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Inappropriate?Subscriptions worked great for months on version 4. I stopped using Songbird for a while. Today I tried to update my subscriptions and all the downloads failed. So I updated to v 7.0 and they still fail.
Blogs are still active (said the gramophone & daytrotter)
Version: Songbird/0.7.0 (20080902163325) (2008072923) Build 0 (Mac PPC)
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Subscription downloads won't work. Download details says "Failed"..
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?I'm new to this type of media player, never had itunes or anything and i was just wondering why my subscriptions do not automatically update even though i have them all set on update every 1 minute. I know new podcasts have been released and even check on the sites to see if the new ones are out but songbird never updates them without me clicking update. Not a major hassle but i thought it would considering under options it says "automatically update every..." Any help with this would be great thanks.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Why won't my subscriptions automatically update?.
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?I would switch from itunes to songbird but it currently isn't catching all of my podcasts which is a problem, if you have any tips on how to make http://www.radio538.nl/clublife/podca... to register as a subscription i would love that. I Love the player but that is my only problem right now. thanks
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Tiesto club life podcast doesn't load. -
Inappropriate?This is fairly simple bug. All CNET podcasts fail in 1.0.0, Build 860 (20081124135419). They appear in the list but NEVER show any episodes. Here is an example URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cnet/buzz...
I have tried some Twit.tv podcasts and they work fine.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Some Subscriptions fail in 1.0.0 Build 860.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Hi, I using a linux system and I like it. The main problem is I can't use itunes, but now I've found songbird things look promising.
I am a big fan of podcasts -I (used to) listen to loads, learning languages -all kinds of stuff. The great thing about the itunes music store was that I could subscribe to podcasts and they would automatically update upon connecting my ipod -is there anything like this that I can use songbird for?(that is a single site from where I can subscribe to podcasts) I am brand new so apologies if this info is already obviously dealt with somewhere here and I haven't noticed.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
subscribing to podcasts.
I’m unsure
