GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 341140
Podcast plugin shouldn't add downloaded files to library
Last modified: 2008-12-06 00:31:42 UTC
Podcast plugin shouldn't add downloaded files to library. They are not music. And they have invalid "artist name", which Recommendation plugin sends to Last.fm and receives an invalid result.
While I would disagree that downloaded files should not be added to the library, I would agree that having audioscrobbler return invalid results because of it is a generally bad thing. Could I ask which feeds you are having issues with?
Another solution is to add a property to TrackInfo in order to distinguish music and others. Banshee shouldn't send information of non-music to Last.fm.
This issue could be solved if the podcasting plugin offered a configuration option allowing you to change which directory the podcasts were saved in, like in Rhythmbox's options dialog.
SmartPlaylist capability can be used to create an all music and an all music library through the use of the path. All podcasts are in a directory which includes 'podcast'. This way you can create a smart playlist that pulls only files in 'podcast' and one that pulls everything but. It's a work-around at least for those bothered by this.
This also matters from an ipod viewpoint - at least on my Nano there's a separate menu entry for podcasts, they should not be part of music library on the ipod either I think. I need to plug this to a mac with itunes to see where they go etc..
*** Bug 394107 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
OK. I've come around. I like podcasts to appear in my library, but, I seem to be in a very small minority. In planning a revision of the plugin I've taken this into account. File this under "That's not a bug, it's a feature." A crappy, crappy feature. :)
Hi Mike, I was going to write a bug report because my podcasts are starting to get fsck'ed up badly, but seeing this bug and that you plan do do a rewrite anyway... Just my "experience": until recently, podcasts went into /media/incoming/Podcasts, for example I have a folder "/media/incoming/Podcasts/LugRadio (high-quality ogg)" and files were named like this: lugradio-s04e08-181206-high.ogg Now, files go into /media/incoming/LugRadio and are named like this: LugRadio_-_04_-_00_-_Season_04_Episode_11.ogg. Banshee still looks for the files using the old naming scheme... and can't play them. I suspect this is because the podcasting plugin uses the new global file naming stuff and is internally not ready to use it (eg saves the "old" path into the db. Strange: if I copy the files to the "right" place and try to play them in banshee they open in totem! Another problem is that when podcasts change their name, also the folder where they are stored seems to change automatically, making older episodes not play anymore. So it would be very nice to be able to not change the path automatically or auto-migrate the old episodes on change. Something I was thinging a about regarding this bug: I also don't like having my podcasts (mostly comedy) in my music library and the audioscrobber recommendations are quite annoying. Wouldn't it be best to save podcast info into a new database, e.g. .gnome2/banshee/podcast.db and then just treat this as a separate "library"? I love this plugin but I fear that it will be very badly broken in banshee 0.12 :(
Abock created a podcast component. I've placed this in there (from Plugins) and will be looking around for some others where this should be the case. :-)
Michael, would you mind sending me a copy of your db file to help confirm a suspicion?
*** Bug 411604 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 415495 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 426699 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I also think that podcasts should not show up in the library. When I listen to the whole library in shuffle-mode it's pretty annoying to get a podcast on the speakers... Furthermore I would say that it is very important that one is able to set where the podcasts are saved. I would like to have them in ~/Podcasts for example, so I can give ~/Music to my friends without giving them all my podcast episodes which they most probably do not want... I think structure is very important in this case!
There's a gconf key at /apps/banshee/plugins/podcast/podcast_library, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
I see two problems with this: If we add Podcasts to the library we have to live with the fact that no podcaster on the planet apparently can tag an mp3 correctly. They are all wrongly tagged, even on a per episode basis they change their naming, album and artist data so if we add the podcasts the library will look wrong and the user will have no way to know what any episode contains. I'm certainly not in the mood to rename all my podcasts, I did however try this and because I have set the write metadata and move on metadata change gconf keys (I like to have my music stored correctly if the metadata needs changing), low and behold when you ensure that all your podcasts actually have the right tags, you can play them only as part of the library since the podcast database doesn't get updated so they cease to play from there. Truly the worst of both worlds. Secondly there is no way to select only music for those of us who let Banshee run all day we can't deselect the podcasts, since the tags aren't right we can't even create a playlist that excludes them. This same problem to a degree exists for audiobooks though their tags seem to be set correctly which makes it easier to work with. So how about when we add podcasts to the library, we rewrite the tags using the additional data the RSS feed provides us, it is after all what we display in the podcast context. If the Genre then is set to Podcast we'd have something to filter on and default smart playlists could be created for those of us who occasionally like a Music only day of background noise. This however would not work around the sharing issue that Timm points out but I think people won't mind podcasts being shared, they are free to ignore them and there are people who might want them shared by default. The fact that the Podcast database doesn't get updated when the files are moved by Banshee does seem like a bug though.
David, see comment #4 concerning your second paragraph.
Not entirely... Having the podcast downloads separated from the library is one thing, having them change the name (and thus sub-folder in the download folder) is another thing. Or does RB have a per-podcast setting for this?
That sounds like 2 different bugs.
The podcast plugin has too many bugs to file :(
David: The next generation podcast plugin does not add podcasts to the library proper. From my experience, trusting metadata from an RSS feed is usually no better than trusting data embedded in the file itself. A user specified podcast directory, user specified per-podcast download directory, and podcast exclusion from the library are all coming in the next version of the plugin. When will the next version be released? I don't know. Progress is being made and the code base has grown to ~10 KLOC in seven months of part-time development. It would have been done by the beginning of the summer, but, on top of school, and Banshee, my future employer asked me to start working ~5 months before I was scheduled to. I fully admit that changes are coming slowly from me. If this is becoming too great of a road block, I would understand if the community decided to seek a new maintainer. In any case, I would be happy to continue contributing.
Mike, Surely real life has to take a priority, that's no problem. Question is, in what state is the rewrite currently? What is missing, what needs to be done before it can be put into banshee? There's probably no point in including it right now, with all the changes being done on trunk. But in 2-3 month time, when things settle down a bit, perhaps it would be the best to put your new code in (perhaps in a branch). Perhaps someone will pick up from that, if not no harm will be done.
*** Bug 445265 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 519736 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 524995 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The podcast support in trunk (the 1.0 series) does not mix your podcasts in with your Music Library. And, it migrates your 0.13.2 data and pulls your podcasts our of your Music Library for you (and into the Podcast source where they belong).
I'm running 1.4.1, and my podcasts are being downloaded into a "podcasts" folder which banshee created inside my music folder. So if I ever need to rescan my music library, the files in the podcasts folder get pulled into the library.