[addon] BTV Podcatcher

[eMpTy3000]

Originally Posted by bubblehead

Here a list of RSS I subscribe to using Podcatcher....

Great list! I'll be sure to take a look at them! Thanks!

[dgonyier]

Thanks for passing along this list. Still seems hard to find video podcasts out there these days other than Revision3 and YouTube stuff. I like those, but variety is good.

[mpp_mpp]

You can also do a search for video podcast in iTunes store and then grab the feed URL from iTunes

I wrote out the instruction on how to do this in the help file.
Go to
Help - Contents
Then Select RSS Feeds- Then Select 'How To Find Feed URL in iTunes'

[BigBill]

I am not an Itunes guy, really like my Walkman so can anyone publish a list of great video podcasts from itunes?

[mpp_mpp]

Take a Look at http://www.videopodcasts.tv it has a big directory of different video podcasts so you can find ones that match any hobbies or other interests

[eMpTy3000]

I thought some of you might like this. You can turn any YouTube search or YouTube user subscription into a video podcast .mp4 files!

http://vixy.net/podcaster

I haven't fully tested it out, but it looks like it should work great!

[Cal]

Crap. Podcatcher went nuts last night and downloaded 5 GB of data.

I do love the addon but I have a couple of suggestions.

1. update the first post. I see the file there is much older then the one a couple pages back. I don't know what one I had. I know I've updated it since the first one but I'm not sure if I was using the newest one.

2. put version numbers in your zip name. It would make it simpler.

3. keep a record of file names that podcatcher has already downloaded so they are not downloaded again automatically by podcatcher of something screws up with the feed. This would prevent what happened to me last night.


I think its a feed issue. My feeds are unreachable right now. I can't reach them manually either. I don't know how you determine if something is new but I think if the feed screws up then podcatcher gets confused and downloads everything thinking its new content.


The feeds I'm currently using are

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cnet/top5
http://revision3.com/tekzilla/feed/xvid-large
http://revision3.com/scamschool/feed/xvid-large/

Its the two revision3 ones that podcatcher went nuts on. The cnet one is fine.

[dgonyier]

Originally Posted by Cal

The feeds I'm currently using are

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cnet/top5
http://revision3.com/tekzilla/feed/xvid-large
http://revision3.com/scamschool/feed/xvid-large/

Its the two revision3 ones that podcatcher went nuts on. The cnet one is fine.

I have had periodic problems with the revision3 feed "download spam" moments as well. Podcatcher provides several means to handle new posts. For Revision3 feeds, setting the Download Based On option for a feed to "Date is new than last items date" (sic) seems to work best to minimize the "download spam" moments. It's not perfect because I think if you watch the most recent download, delete it, then restart podcatcher or reboot or something, podcatcher might re download some of the newer items in the feed again since the "last item" would be the next oldest item. I'm not sure about this side effect (it's a guess).


The version of podcatcher I have is 2.2.976.12. I think that is the latest version. I agree that it would be better to have the latest version pointed to by the first post.

[noodleNT]

Same problem here, i will try your tip dgonyier. Thanks.

[Cal]

I will try that. If I'm reading your suggestion right, then I should always keep the last podcast on my hard drive if using that option so that Podcatcher knows what the latest download was.

If that does the trick then I can do that. I'll turn it back on and set it that way and see what happens.

[mpp_mpp]

Sorry was unable to provide support while i was on vacation for the holiday (GPRS cell phone speed is not fast enough to do anything online)

Here are my responses

Originally Posted by Cal

1. update the first post. I see the file there is much older then the one a couple pages back. I don't know what one I had. I know I've updated it since the first one but I'm not sure if I was using the newest one.

I can not update the first post my self because this post is created and maintained by the people at snapstream who administrator the plug ins. I can send them an official release but have not done that yet because there a couple of thing that are not finished in the product (mainly the help which I have to reconstruct because the sources file were only on a laptop whose hard drive went bad and a couple of other clean up with the download manager )

Originally Posted by Cal

2. put version numbers in your zip name. It would make it simpler.

The installer has a version as a part of the file information. (right click on the msi file then on the summary tab the reversion number currently it is {09F9D380-BA50-4119-8FD7-4281318AEA17} (this is a Microsoft created number that has to changes with each release)

There is also a version info as a part of all of the exe and dll files that are installed. right click on a file and in the details or version tab is the file version currently the main exe is 2.3.976.12

you can also get the version info from inside the program (go to help - then click on about (or you can press Ctrl-A)) currently it is 2.3.976.12

With all of this version I was trying not to make it a part of the file name because this would have to be a manual process and be something that I would forget to do.

I have added to my signature a link to the most recent version of the program

Originally Posted by Cal

3. keep a record of file names that podcatcher has already downloaded so they are not downloaded again automatically by podcatcher of something screws up with the feed. This would prevent what happened to me last night.

this was done in version 2. look at the download based on option in the feed setup

Your main problem with the program downloading all the shows over is actually more of a problem with the feed provider. I think what happened is they remove the shows that were downloaded from the feed. then your btv podcatcher updated and saw the show removed so it removed the show from its memory to save space on the hard drive and in the file that holds the feed information. The feed then re added the shows. Then btv podcatcher updated and saw the show noticed it was not found in the feed file then it process that show as new and it might downloaded it based on the feed setup.

Here are Several feed options to look at when setting up or modifying a feed in the feed setup form to prevent this from occuring

Remove items when not found in the feed refresh: when this is set to yes it will not remove a show information when a feed is updated and the show is not found on the feed. Setting this to no would have not removed the old shows from the file that has the feed information and the feed

maximum number download to this setting tell the program at the time of refreshing the feed how many show from that feed it can download at a time if this was set to 5 instead of downloading all of the episodes from the feed it would have only gotten the 5 of them.

Here what I would do in the mean time till you get the next version that may or may not fix this issue (see note at end of this post)

I would leave my download based on option alone (most of mine are set to GUID but a couple of feeds that act up regular I do set based on file name (ask a ninja is one of those feed))
I then set the maximum number download to be a relevant number (most of mine are set between 3 to 7 depending on the feeds release schedule)
then I would change the Remove items when not found in the feed refresh to no.


An update I am working on for the program will notice if the program does not see any show on the feed during a refresh it will always leave all the old show on the feed. As I do not have the feed at the each time of refresh I can not confirm this will fix the issue but it might help

[Cal]

Originally Posted by mpp_mpp

Sorry was unable to provide support while i was on vacation for the holiday (GPRS cell phone speed is not fast enough to do anything online)

Here are my responses

Enjoy your vacation. No need to think you owe us anything. If your like me you do programing for the enjoyment of it and have a regular job with other duties.

Thanks for the comments. I will try your suggestions. Looks like I may have missed some important options back when I was setting this all up.

You have a great little apps here.

[dgonyier]

Thanks for the detailed suggestions. I'll give them a try for the Revision3 feeds as well, especially setting "Remove items no longer in feed" to "No". I admit I did not fully understand the purpose of that option before your post.

In respect to your comment about conserving disk space for the feed information data, how about adding options to the general program settings to never download items in feed older than XX days ago and/or purging old feed items from the local feed information file after XX days as well?

[mobile_bob]

I know that Windows 7 is not officialy supported but just to let you know BTV Podcatcher crashes when I try and run it in Windows 7. It was working fine on Vista but as soon as I upgraded, it no longer would launch.

[mpp_mpp]

Thanks for letting me know I will take a look at it but since I have yet to move to windows 7 on any systems it will take me some time to set up a test environment for this. in the mean time can you tell me any more information about the crash.

Also did you do a clean install of windows 7 or an upgrade install of windows 7.
if you did an upgrade of windows 7 you might try uninstalling BTV Podcatcher then reinstalling BTV Podcatcher