ID3 tags on podcasts
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 03:47
Hey fellow Riskies - what d'ya think about this?
One thing I just LOATHE is programs which think they know what you want to do better than you do, but don't. Which is why in a new installation of Word I always go through and switch off all the options that say anything about Smart or Automagic (and still sometimes have to export to OpenOffice to dodge all the magic).
But a short head behind MS in this respect is most MP3 players (MTP class devices), which insist on cataloguing your content by Album, Artist and Genre, which is pretty useless when it comes to podcasts and hardly any better for classical music. (I guess they store content in an RDBMS such as SQLite.) OK, iTunes and the Creative media organiser (I have a Creative ZEN) have their own ways of organising podcasts, but do I want to get locked into a proprietary scheme? Like I want a hole in the head!
So why this rant? The Risky Biz podcast currently comes with no ID3 tags in the MP3 file. Other podcasts I subscribe to set them to pretty random strings, the most logical (Security Now) setting the Genre to Podcast. If everybody did that, or set the Genre to Speech (a defined Genre, unlike Podcast), I could easily find all my podcasts. Instead, for every podcast I download, I have to either manually set the Genre, or manually add it to a Podcasts playlist. This is a pain.
Did everyone else simply take the iTunes brain transplant, or is there a consensus that this could be done better?
Regards - Philip
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 16:35
#2
I used iTunes, so I don't
I used iTunes, so I don't have any problems with that.
However...
If we're currently requesting features, the bookmark feature for podcasts would be awesome. A couple of times I've wanted to re-listen to a specific section of the podcast on my iPhone and the controls aren't fine enough to skip gracefully through a 40 min track, not to mention I can't remember if this 5 second audio comes before or after the section I want.
Maybe I'm the only one? anyone else like bookmarks in podcasts?
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:27
#3
I know the pain of auto
I know the pain of auto features. The idea of automation should be to make things easier or faster not to make things more cumbersome and drawn out. This is why I hate auto run.
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 07:17
#4
Yep, ID3 tags please
For some time I've been manually typing the Artist & Album tags once my podcatcher has downloaded the RB podcasts; Genre would also be good.
I just had a look at RB on iTunes; and the new feed is listed with artist of "Unknown"; the old ones have artist "ITRadio.com.au: security". Obviously something should appear here ...
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 13:28
#5
ID3 Tags
I normally use IPodder to grab my weekly hit of RB. (ok, so im Applephobic...or is that i-phobic?)
I've never really been concerned with genre tagging on the downloads, but i suppose setting Artist to "Risky.Biz" or something makes sense.
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 14:29
#6
Message Received!
I'll be sure to start adding some ID3 tags when I add artwork...
Seems there's enough of you out there who'd find it useful. I'll probably forget every now and then for the first few months.
Thanks for all the feedback, ppl!
If you're so inclined, leave some audio feedback for inclusion in next week's show... Sydney 02 8569 1835 or USA +1 877 688 8417 (Toll free).
As someone who's been writing professionally since 2002, you don't have to tell me what a pain in the ass Microsoft autoeverything is... especially when you have to take your final copy and paste it into a publishing system that doesn't understand all its "special" characters. Sigh.
Is anyone else out there experiencing this same problem re ID3 tags? I guess I should start tagging it as a "podcast"... I use iTunes to embed the artwork, so I guess I could just tag it when I do that.
Thoughts?