Follow up question for those of you that download...

[Lemon]

For the people that said "download MP3's" in this thread. I'm wondering what that process works like for you. Are you going to thefpl.us every time you want to hear an episode and playing it there in the browser? Are you downloading the files into a folder and then just click on the one you want? Do you take the files an import them into some other music player without good podcast support (like for example all of them) What's the process like for you and does the MP3 metadata (ex: Title, cover image, etc) help out at all?

[cyclopeantrash]

Toss 'em in a folder. Play 'em in foobar. Don't know what does or does not qualify as good podcast support.

[EYE OF ZA]

I download them and either play them in Windows Media Player from Downloads or I play them on my Android phone.  Usually through Google Play Music, because it automatically searches your device, whereas my dedicated "music media player" has to rescan every time you load something new.

The metadata does help, especially the cover art and getting sorted by episode number, as it keeps them nice and ordered.  The only strangeness there is when you switched from "seasons" in the album field to just putting in the year of the episode.

And obviously the title is helpful for knowing which episode.  The regular filenames are nice too, because some podcasts have their episodes titled random things and it's tough trying to find consecutive episodes in a folder, but the F Plus doesn't have that problem so yay.

[Ansemaru]

I tend to listen to episodes first on the website, but when I actually bother to use itunes, download the past few episodes in bulk so I can revisit them when I work.

[Lady Frenzy]

I don't download them onto my computer; I listen to them directly off the site. Then I put them on my iPod for future re-listening.

[Odd]

I download them directing into my phone where god sorts them into the appropriate folder.
That way if I lose my phone and somebody finds it I will change their lives forever.

[Cyberventurer]

I drop them all in an F Plus folder on my desktop because I'm a weirdo, and just play them through Winamp.

[Moriarty]

I normally copy the link from the RSS feed and JDownloader grabs the file for me, but I had to download it manually this week due to strangeness with the originally posted link. I usually listen to the new ones in VLC when I get them, but I eventually migrate them to my mp3 player.

My mp3 player gets what it considers to be the podcast name from whatever's in the "Album" tag, so I had to batch re-tag everything to "FPlus" to stop it from grouping episodes under a bunch of random different names ("Season Two", "2014", etc)

ETA: Oh, and having the episode number in the "track" field is useful for convincing my mp3 player to display the files in order, but the simple and consistent file naming scheme makes that less of an issue for this podcast. (Other podcasts will often use the title of each episode as the filename or make other variations in how they label different episodes, resulting in the files not being in the correct order if listed alphabetically, which my mp3 player does if there's no track number to tell it differently.)

[montrith]

I download them to my comp and usually transfer my favorites to my phone to listen again.

[steinrokkan]

I learn about new episodes from the Something Awful thread. In absence of that I would probably start using the RSS.

I save them into a directory I use for Spoken Word files, and play them in Winamp. I don't really know what good podcast support means - the file plays from beginning to end, and that is literally 100% of what I need and want.

As for metadata - I don't really care abut that unless I want to transfer a file into a portable device that only sorts stuff by metadata.

[Lemon]

I guess by "good podcast support" I mean that in my experience (and I do keep trying), I can't find any computer program other than iTunes that does what I'd expect with podcast subscriptions. Meaning: Check the RSS feed with regularity, add the new metadata for any new episode (including episode notes and image), download and keep according to rules that I set, and remember my place if I stop and come back to it.

The closest I've found for Windows is Miro, which isn't terrible but the interface isn't great and the image support could best be described as "bug-ridden". Also the thing gives you a page of ads when you open it.

I really wish somebody would do a better job. iTunes for Windows is really bloated, and I've mostly abandoned the idea of using a program to listen to local MP3 files, so it functions as just a podcatcher - all of these iPod helpers are not doing me any favors. I wish someone would make something lightweight or alternately do the Spotify/GoogleMusic approach for podcasts. Or hell, Google Music could just support podcasts. Seems pretty obvious - grab the stream and put the files in the same place where all your albums are stored, stream to the subscriber from there. Maybe one day, I know I'm not a good enough programmer to handle it.

I was wondering how many people were having problems with the changing system I've had for the MP3 tags. I think the system should be pretty standardized now.

• Song Title = Episode Name (without number)
• Track Number = Episode Number (this gets confusing for bonuses and extras)
• Album = Year (The "Season" thing was kind of arbitrary)
• Artist & Album Artist = The F Plus
• Composer = whoever edited the episode
• Genre = Podcast

Anyone have a problem with that implementation, or a suggestion on what to change? I'm thinking next time a non-standard episode gets released I'll just leave track number blank.

Also, it's better for us if people just download the episode once and listen to it at their leisure, since repeatedly streaming the same episode means our server takes a hit every time, but that'll probably change this weekend as we explore hosting alternatives. It would be nice to not care about bandwidth, but we're gonna have to pay more to not care.

(also if and when we change the MP3 hosting around, I'm gonna redo all of the metatags, so they should all be consistent to the rules above)

[Borgy-Le-Borg]

The changing of MP3 tags doesn't really bother me, I download the episodes from the site pretty soon after they go up (usually check every 2-3 days) and then I stick them on my iPod classic. I like the new system of 'year' instead of 'season' because as you said, 'season's were quite arbitrary.

One thing I've been wondering recently, do you have data on which episodes have been downloaded the most? I think that would be quite interesting to see (apologies if iTunes already does this, I just download from the site).