Podcast trouble?

Anyone else having trouble playing these podcasts?  I'm guessing it has something to do with the length, but this is the only podcast that my Blackberry won't play.

 

Have you ever thought of splitting the podcasts into mutlple pieces when it exceeds one CD length?

Comments

sconway - Wed, 05/20/2009 - 22:50

I haven't had any reports of the show not playing. I am not aware of any technological reason that the length of the file should cause such problems.

One listener said the last two shows show up with a zillion chapter breaks on his iPhone when playing the enhanced version. That's the only oddity of note.

I'm certainly interested to know if anyone else is having issues.

joeyhemlock - Thu, 05/21/2009 - 15:05

I downloaded Ep 78 to my iPod Touch just to see, and indeed it appears to have a chapter break every time there's a picture change. It tells me that there are 200 chapters total. On my "normal" iPod, there appears to be no such issue.  Episodes 74-77 have the same problem. In addition, instead of having the episode graphic when you view them in the list of episodes, it has the generic "The Spiel" graphic for the episode. I wonder if there's a difference between downloading them over WiFi like I am now and downloading them to iTunes and then transferring them with a cable. I'll try that when I get home.

Normally for enhanced podcasts, I get a chapter list that is named by segments: "News & Notes", "The List: Game One", "The List: Game Two" and so on. With these "wrong" podcasts, it's just "Chapter 1" "Chapter 2".

i don't know what's going on, but I'll keep experimenting and researching on the internet.

sconway - Thu, 05/21/2009 - 15:57

Thanks for helping me troubleshoot this issue.

I have checked the pre-mixdown files to make sure I didn't mess up the chapter breaks and they appear to synch up with the segment breaks as normal.

It must have something to do with wifi downloads OR how the iPhone is dealing with the m4a enhanced file, since it is coming through fine on regular iPods. Very odd!

I'll continue to scour the web to see if there's anything I can do on my side to fix it.

joeyhemlock - Thu, 05/21/2009 - 16:16

It's not just a iPhone thing in general, because I had Eps 71 and 72 on there from a while back and they're fine. But I downloaded Ep 70 and it's the same weird thing. Unless there was a firmware update to the iPod (which i don't think there was), then nothing should have changed in that time. I'm leaning towards weirdness with the WiFi download right now, though I don't know why it should make a difference. I'll let you know what I find.

joeyhemlock - Thu, 05/21/2009 - 22:14

Okay: I used iTunes to remove The Spiel from my iPod Touch and did a sync. I verified that the episodes that I had were removed. Then I set iTunes to download the five most recent episodes (74-78) which had been downloaded to iTunes already and did another sync. The five episodes loaded to the Touch with normal chapter breaks. Then I used WiFi to download 73 and, indeed, it had the same weird 200+ chapter breaks.

So I guess it's a WiFi thing. Weird. I don't know whether downloading it over EDGE (AT&T's high-speed digital network) would yield the same results because, obviously, the Touch doesn't have that.

I'd recommend to people that they use iTunes if they want the enhanced podcast.

sconway - Fri, 05/22/2009 - 00:36

The more I thought about this, the more I thought I had heard of problems related to wifi downloads and the iPhone/Touch. Then I remembered there was a TWiT episode a while ago where Leo Laporte mentioned he had problems with apps crashing his iPhone. Come to find out the apps responsible were *all* ones he had used wifi to download. When he redownloaded them through iTunes, the problems disappeared.

I guess it makes sense in that there is a greater chance of some data loss during the download over wifi. If enough data is lost, things don't run as expected but they still try to run.

I already have the next episode mostly edited or I would add in a bit explaining this issue. Episode 80, for sure I'll make sure to mention it.

Thanks a bunch for confirming my suspicions.

davebo - Thu, 05/21/2009 - 00:08

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a combination of a m4a and a long file.  I know other m4a's have played, but even those tended to freak out after a while I'm remembering now.

 

I'll let you know how the mp3 works.