Comments on: Make Use Of Podcast #45: How to Podcast pt. II

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:12:59 +0000

Jason,

That did it. Thanks! I just caught up on podcasts#47-50 and they all worked fine – the fixed ID3 Length Tag allowed Rockbox to correctly jump forward and backward.

Thanks again,
Marc

By: Make Use Of Podcast #48: How to Podcast Pt. 3 | MakeUseOf.com

Make Use Of Podcast #48: How to Podcast Pt. 3 | MakeUseOf.com — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:03:42 +0000

[...] week in the continuing series on podcasting (here are Part 1 and Part 2) we look at adding music and sound effects to your podcast and how to make it all sound smooth and [...]

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:56:26 +0000

I’ll give it a try as soon as I can – I’m in NH and haven’t had power since last Fri! I’m reading my email via dial-up as I do have phone and a laptop. Oh joy!

Thanks,
Marc

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:59:03 +0000

No, actually I was talking about the next one after Mapple. This one. Does it work any better for you?

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:53:13 +0000

Jason,

If by next podcast you mean #46 (Mapple’s) then no joy. The ID3 Length Tag said 15 minutes while the podcast was only 5 minutes.

Note: This is not my MP3 player reading the Length Tag incorrectly – if I look at the podcast file with any ID3 tool (like ‘MP3 Tag Tool’) it will show the incorrect time in the Length Tag.

The MUO podcast files that I have looked at have been obtained in one of 2 ways: I use Juice to download the podcasts, but this last time I downloaded it directly from you website.

The incorrect ID3 Length Tag is created on your end I believe.

Some more info – if I load the file into Windows Media Player it shows the correct length. If I load it in to another media player, like FooBar2000 or VLC Media Player it shows the incorrect ‘ID3 Length Tag’ as the length.

Thanks,

Marc

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:43:52 +0000

I believe I’ve discovered the problem. I encode the podcast as with a variable bit rate and according to at least one source “many MP3 players may inaccurately report the duration of VBR-encoded files.”

The next podcast will be encoded CBR instead of VBR. Please let me know if you notice a difference.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:46:54 +0000

Marc,

I will look into that and let you know what I find out.

Thanks for your comment,
Jason

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:30:14 +0000

Jason,

I recently started to list to the MUO podcast (since #34) and I have enjoyed most episodes.

I’m writing because of a technical problem I’m having with your podcast – your ID3v2 tag always has an incorrect length, for instance #45 has a ID3 length tag of 43:06 – when in reality the podcast is only about 11 minutes long. This problem has been with all of your podcasts that I’ve downloaded.

FWIW, I listen to 53 other podcasts and none of them have ever exhibited this problem.

Why is it a problem? I use Rockbox (love it) on a Sandisk Sansa e250 (really like it). One of the best features is the ability to set the FF and RR buttons to skip forward/backward a user specified amount of time with a momentary touch and go into FF/RR mode when holding the button down. I set my skip time to 15 secs.

So if I’m listening to a podcast and I miss something or want to have something repeated all I have to do is hit the RR button and Rockbox will jump back 15 secs in the audio stream. Unfortunately the algorithm in Rockbox appears to use the ID3 length, the current time code and the amount to skip to calculate where to start playing — and when the length is incorrect I end up nowhere near where I want to be.

So my request is please set the ID3 length tag to the correct time.

Thanks,
Marc