drPodder (a.k.a. PrePod)

[gage006]

Originally Posted by REOScotte

I'm just glad you've discovered how to work around it. I've run into the "bookmark not correct" problem several times, but never correlated it to unplugging headphones. I'll be sure to use the pause from now on.

I think it has to do with it not being "active". I tested it today by having the screen on and it as the active card when I unplugged my headphones and it worked fine. Bookmarked at the correct location. I imagine if it's not the active card, the issue would reappear.

I'm not sure if it's possible for him to update the bookmark when the screen is in standby but a workaround could be the next time you have it as the active card, it can compare it's currently play position and the last bookmark position and move the bookmark accordingly if they don't match.

[DanPLC]

Originally Posted by drnull

Throwing away the card while still playing can't save your spot because WebOS doesn't allow database operations while the app is closing. There are ways I could get around this, I just haven't worked that out yet.

The way I solved this problem in my app was to use a cookie instead of a database transaction. Asynchronous operations such as database transactions are not guaranteed to finish prior to the app closing. But cookie saves have worked every time.

[myxptlyk]

Originally Posted by drnull

1) The buttons along the bottom are nav buttons. From left to right:
-60 seconds, -20 seconds, play/pause, +20 seconds, +60 seconds
And they also map to the bottom row of keyboard buttons:
Shift=-60, @/0=-20, Space=play/pause, .=+20, Sym=+60

As far as the timing on those buttons goes..please don't change them, I love 'em. It's exactly the right amount of time for me to skip through the traffic & weather reports when I'm listening to podcasts of radio shows without actually missing anything.

[gage006]

Originally Posted by DanPLC

The way I solved this problem in my app was to use a cookie instead of a database transaction. Asynchronous operations such as database transactions are not guaranteed to finish prior to the app closing. But cookie saves have worked every time.

Having it save by just tossing the card would be amazing. I imagine there'd be a lot of rewriting to be done though to change how it's handled.

[mquiche]

It seems that in 1.2.1 (and probably, 1.2.0), these settings have moved to /etc/palm/download.conf. (The settings in /etc/palm/luna.conf are ignored.)

Originally Posted by diomark

DrNull -

In regards to the wifi download speed.. Have you seen this?

In the file /etc/palm/luna.conf

[DownloadManager]
MaxQueueLength=128
MaxConcurrent=2
MaxRecvSpeed=65536 <--- ?

-mark

[Quintus]

I love this app. One suggestion, PLEASE: Can you add a "resume play" button (like the Music (Remix) app) to quickly get back to the last podcast being listened to? Thanks.

[cpester]

@muppet_funk: Ever get any feedback to your suggestion of including "variable playback speed". This is the single feature holding me back. Would love to retire my iPod.

[muppet_funk]

I don't actually remember off the top of my head. I think it was the case that there just isn't anything in the SDK to offer that functionality at the moment.

A number of people have recommended just sending your feeds through podshifter.com's service. Instead of having your Pre speed up the playback, they'll just give you an audio file that has the playback in it sped up. Seems like a viable work around. I haven't tried it yet myself.

[trippcook]

This app is AWESOME!

One weird bug, not sure if it's been brought up ---- when I start a new podcast, often there is theme music or a commercial I want to skip instantly. But, if I hit either fastforward button, it just replays from the start again, even though the progress bar shows that I've moved 20 seconds or a minute ahead. I have no other tweaks or homebrew apps installed --- this is it for me.

[REOScotte]

Originally Posted by trippcook

when I start a new podcast, often there is theme music or a commercial I want to skip instantly. But, if I hit either fastforward button, it just replays from the start again, even though the progress bar shows that I've moved 20 seconds or a minute ahead.

I'm pretty sure this is a known issue with WebOS. It's a least known to me Pressing fast forward again usually works. I think this is related to the problem with podcasts ending before they're done though.

[TreoRock]

Hey DrPodder, I've noticed something funny when the app starts downloading a podcast and you try to play the same exact podcast it actually streams instead of reading from what it's been downloading... I'm guessing it hasn't been programmed to read from what it's currently downloading. Could that feature be added? It would be nice.

[Blackmere]

This is a great app. Thank you for all your work.

I've notice a couple small things. First, when viewing the shownotes on one of the podcasts (the 404) they often have a large image first, I can scroll around the image but when I try to scroll down into the text after the image it bounces back up to the image when I lift my finger. I cannot scroll down to read the rest of the show notes.

Second, I have a dynamic playlist for some of my podcasts. I start it by choosing "Play from bottom". Sometimes, when one podcast ends the next will not start playing. The time shows 00:00 at the end of the progress slider and the play button is greyed out. If I start the show on its own it plays fine.

[cajunlibra]

Does anyone else miss this feature besides me? I haven't seen it as an option in a while.

[muppet_funk]

That feature still exists. When you're on the episode list screen, tap the feed's title bar.

As noted by Blackmere and several others before, it seems to get stuck sometimes. Instead of advancing to the next episode, it just sits and the end of the finished one. You have to swipe back to the eopsiode list screen to get things going again. The developer is aware of the problem.

[cajunlibra]

Oh ok Thanks. I was thinking it was still in the Menu for the app.

I've had those issues myself with some of the episodes.

[diomark]

I have two hacks running on my Pre which really help with this app -

1) download speed limit. Defaults to some godly slow number. I've got it set to unlimited. The issue though is that the phone can crawl during a wifi download (but it blazes through a 500mb file in ~2-3 minutes over my wifi connection. To do this, edit /etc/palm/luna.conf and make the following change -

from -

[DownloadManager]
MaxQueueLength=128
MaxConcurrent=2
MaxRecvSpeed=65536

To:

[DownloadManager]
MaxQueueLength=128
MaxConcurrent=2
MaxRecvSpeed=-1

2) Avoiding the "Sorry, too many cards" error, especially when streaming using drPodder. I was getting annoyed with this one. Downloading the file first then playing was fine.. but streaming an audio/video file meant that I couldn't really have too many other apps open. I found a fix for this, which I've posted about here - http://forums.precentral.net/web-os-...rds-error.html - basically it involves setting a smaller /tmp and /media/ram partition upon reboot.

[greenawayj]

Just a question (confirmation) about how drPodder handles broken, interrupted, or corrupted downloads... I've noticed in just a few occasions that some of my 'downloaded' (with the grey "Play" symbol) podcasts are 0:00 length when I try to play them. I haven't spent too much time analyzing why this occurs, but I suspect the cause to be an interrupted download on the Pre side (at first I also considered that it might be a corrupt / incorrectly uploaded file on the podcast server side, but re-downloading the file -- see below -- usually has resulted in success).

Anyway, one thing that threw me for a loop for a little while when trying to recover these broken files was how to redownload them. Since drPodder thinks they are correctly on the device, picking the episode from a feed's episode list transitions to the "Play" screen and just sits there - playing nothing. To my knowledge, there isn't a way to redownload a particular episode directly from the "Play" screen or even the feed's episode list (mine usually show just "New" episodes). So, my solution has been to swipe the broken episode from the podcast's episode list, then select show View: "Old" (or "All" I suppose) in the lower left. Finally, with the Old episodes showing, most will have either an empty Gray circle (no play symbol) or a red circle (with white line partly through it). From there it's possible to tap the red circle (turns it gray) and then tap the gray circle to choose to "Mark as New" or "Download" -- either selection will re-download the broken file and mark it as new so it is shown in the "View: New" filter. From there it can be played as usual successfully

Clearly, the back end of this approach will also work to re-listen to podcasts which you have already listened to but have been deleted...

... finally on the note of deleted podcasts, I know I had set all of my feeds preferences as "Delete when finished" but when I just checked each of them this morning, the "Delete when finished" option does not stick. I've even set the switch to Yes again this morning and when I exit out of preferences and return, it always goes back to Off. Is anyone else experiencing this? Edit for clarification: I think, the app is actually behaving as if "Delete when finished" is working correctly. When an episode is done playing, it no longer appears on my new list. I guess I'll have to verify whether the episode remains in the folder on the Media partition. (Don't have time for that now).

[muppet_funk]

I'm not sure what you mean about downloaded episodes with the gray play symbol. Gray means the episode has been marked Old and the attachment has been deleted (or was never downloaded to start with). The symbol for a new episode with a downloaded attachment is blue with a white triangle. Red with a white line means the episode has been marked Old but the attachment has not been deleted.

(for completeness here, the other two possibilities are green with a white arrow and purple with a question mark. Green means the episode is marked New and the attachment was either deleted or not downloaded. Purple means the app couldn't find an attachment for that episode.)

You are correct that you cannot re-download from the episode detail screen. You have to do that from the episode list screen. If you have Single Tap enabled in the Preferences, then from the episode list, tap and hold the episode. You should get a pop up menu with an option to download. If you do not have Single Tap enabled, then from the episode list, just tap the episode to get the pop up menu.

To get the Delete when finished setting to stick, make sure you scroll down to the bottom of that scene and tap the Update button.

[muppet_funk]

diomark,
When you set the download speed to unlimited, does the device become unresponsive while downloading, or can you still be doing stuff in other cards while that's happening?

[greenawayj]

Originally Posted by muppet_funk

I'm not sure what you mean about downloaded episodes with the gray play symbol. Gray means the episode has been marked Old and the attachment has been deleted (or was never downloaded to start with). The symbol for a new episode with a downloaded attachment is blue with a white triangle. Red with a white line means the episode has been marked Old but the attachment has not been deleted.

(for completeness here, the other two possibilities are green with a white arrow and purple with a question mark. Green means the episode is marked New and the attachment was either deleted or not downloaded. Purple means the app couldn't find an attachment for that episode.)

Thanks. Now that I've compared the "Downloaded" (blue with white triangle) to the "Old and deleted" (gray and empty)... you are totally correct. To my tired eyes this morning, that particular shade of blue looked very gray, with a white 'play' triangle in the middle.... and I was looking at the "New" view so I didn't have any real grays to compare it to side-by-side.

I also didn't realize what the red-white line symbol meant. I assume that tapping the red symbol (which turns it gray) will delete the attachment from the card?

Originally Posted by muppet_funk

You are correct that you cannot re-download from the episode detail screen. You have to do that from the episode list screen. If you have Single Tap enabled in the Preferences, then from the episode list, tap and hold the episode. You should get a pop up menu with an option to download. If you do not have Single Tap enabled, then from the episode list, just tap the episode to get the pop up menu.

Thanks. I do use single-tap, so I didn't know about tap and hold. Actually, it's tap and hold... and release. Pop-up menu doesn't come up until you release. Also, for a little while, I didn't realize the 'old' episodes were still there but hidden by my "View: New" setting.

Originally Posted by muppet_funk

To get the Delete when finished setting to stick, make sure you scroll down to the bottom of that scene and tap the Update button.

Thanks again. Also didn't know about this -- since so many other 'settings' or 'preferences' scenes in WebOS just save on backswipe and don't require a "save" button. I actually prefer the 'save' button route.

Final edit: I've been around here long enough to know to re-read the OP once in an while on thread this old. If I'd done that, it wouldn't necessarily have fixed my corrupted download issue, but you wouldn't have needed to spend 3 minutes reviewing the color spectrum legend with me!