What I would really like is a way to remove the iTunes feature that stops downloading a podcast when it decides I'm not listening to it. For some reason the podcasts that I'm subscribed to are constantly set to this state, even though I tend to listen to most of them fairly frequently, I thought.

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I'm the developer of Cast Away. (Thanks Rob for posting this.) I fully agree with the last comment, and tried to find away around it. Hence, the option "Play one episode per podcast silently and briefly." The idea was to force iTunes to think that you had listened to it. However, it doesn't work as designed. In the upcoming revision, I'm going to try playing the last 2 seconds of the podcast episode instead, and that might work. By the way, the URL for Wooden Brain Concepts should be: http://beam.to/woodenbrain

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So, does Cast Away have an override that lets you keep all podcasts that haven't been played?

While I want to get rid of old podcasts, I don't want to drop the ones I haven't listened to yet. And I have at least one podcast that my wife and I are listening to independantly. That one I don't want to delete at all until it has been played twice. Do you have logic to support these kinds of situations?

Doc

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I'm glad I'm not the only one with that problem. It's annoying as heck. I routinely select all and then mark them all as played. Apple should change this behavior.

I rarely listen to podcasts on iTunes, but instead transfer them either to my Nano at home or my ROKR at work (I know, I've got fanboitus really bad). It would be great to disable this "feature".

Along the same lines, does anybody know if there's a hack that allows a single playlist to be synched when the iPod is mounted? iTunes wants to either auto-synch as specified or go to manual mode. There are some playlists that I want auto-synched, but most I want to manual manage. Any ideas?


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the revision i made is working and i will release an update soon (to mark podcasts played so iTunes won't stop updating them.)

as for synching particular playlists, that is already built into iTunes. Just plug in the iPod, select the options button, and specify only selected playlists.

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"as for synching particular playlists, that is already built into iTunes."

Right, but the problem is that iTunes wants to either auto-synch or let you manually manage. I want to do both. Specifically, I have Audio Hijack Pro record scheduled TV shows audio as AAC and put them into an iTunes playlist. I want only that one playlist to be synched and one other playlist that has my PhoneValet voicemail since those will be updated daily.

The problem is that if I turn on synching, I can select only those two playlists to be synched, but then I can't manually manage other playlists on the iPod unless I turn synching back off.

This is another one of those, "why is this" kinda things. I would think a lot of people would want to synch one or two playlists only, and then manually manage the rest.

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What I would really like is a way to change the "Keep Unplayed Episodes" behavior.

iTunes marks a podcast as played when any portion of it is played. I want it to mark podcasts the same way it marks songs, once they are played in full. This option would mean that I could automatically manage all of my podcasts instead of having to go through and uncheck the ones I have listened to.

I don't want a podcast to disappear from my iPod during a sync before I'm done listening to it!

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I did this by createing an "Unplayed Podcasts" Smart Playlist. Really simple. Podcast is true AND Playcount is less than 1. If the podcast is on the playlist, it will be copied to the iPod, but won't be available from the podcast menu, just the playlist.

Doc

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"it will be copied to the iPod, but won't be available from the podcast menu, just the playlist."

That is the problem. The iPod treats podcasts differently in playlists than in the "Podcasts" section.

I have used smart playlists to make this almost automatic (I have a "Played Podcasts" playlist that is "only checked songs" with playcount >0; I uncheck whatever is in there periodically), but I want full automation as it should work (I can't see the current setup as useful to very many people).

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Some things I'd like to do are:
- always keep the latest 2 (or 3) episodes, delete all others
- keep all episodes for 2 weeks
- keep as many episodes of a podcast as fit into 200 MB
- keep as many episodes overall to always have 2 GB free mem on my machine
- keep until heard
- keep only video episodes (or audio episodes), for mixed podcasts
- keep only short ones (or long ones)
etc. etc., you get the idea. Now what does this tool offer? Only the distinction between "keep all" and "delete 'em when heard". That's nothing!

Additionaly, the tool doesn't make it clear whether it's turned on or off (I'm not so sure what will happen now to my podcasts tomorrow morning, to be frank).

Hope to see some far greater apps for this in the future :-(

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Compared to iTunes built-in capabilities, I still stand by this as fine-grained control -- what I meant was that you can control each podcast's settings, not just one lump for all of them.

But as you've seen, the author is participating here, so if you ask, perhaps he can implement some/all of your requests in a future version...

-rob.

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Hi, thank's for your input. Some of these suggestions could be implemented. The problem is that they would make the interface confusing and cluttered. If more people clamored for a certain feature I would definitely try to add it, but so far you are the only one.

some comments:

>> always keep the latest 2 (or 3) episodes, delete all others

You realize you could always keep the latest 1, right? Setting a different value for how many to keep, could be a global value.

>> keep all episodes for 2 weeks

This is already there. Just put in 14 (days) for the retain value for each.

>> - keep as many episodes of a podcast as fit into 200 MB

This would be another column.

>> keep as many episodes overall to always have 2 GB free mem on my machine

Difficult to implement as it would involve all your other music and your whole file system.

>> keep until heard

Might be possible, but it would be another column, and it would conflict with the function to make itunes update all podcasts, as that marks an episode as heard.

>> keep only video episodes (or audio episodes), for mixed podcasts

don't know about this one since i don't use video podcasts. i could look into it. would be another column.

>> keep only short ones (or long ones)

would be a mess. don't you find that the episode length for most podcasts is pretty close?

>>etc. etc., you get the idea.

No, I don't get the idea beyond the specific (some good) suggestions you've made. I can't just invent people's needs. I design for what's useful to me + what other people want.

>> Now what does this tool offer? Only the distinction between "keep all" and "delete 'em when heard". That's nothing!

It offers a lot more than that. Did you look at the interface or info?

>> Additionaly, the tool doesn't make it clear whether it's turned on or off (I'm not so sure what will happen now to my podcasts tomorrow morning, to be frank).

It's on when the schedule is set and off when it isn't.

>> Hope to see some far greater apps for this in the future :-(

Best of luck, thanks for your support.

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A specific example for the "keep only short ones"/"keep only long ones" idea.

Inside Mac Radio has a daily news podcast that is about 5-10 minutes long. Since it's just the news segment, it is very topical. They also have an hour and 20 minute show on the weekend that includes all the news from the past week. These have other interviews and some folk may want to save them for later reference.

So in this case you have 1 podcast where someone might want to save a podcast longer than 20 minutes indefinately, but throw away podcasts under 20 minutes after a week.

There may be other examples.

Doc

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You'll be happy to know that many of these suggestions have been implemented in Cast Away 1.5, just released on Version Tracker.

There are heaps of new features here, so there may be some issues remaining, but I've just spent a good deal of T-Giving weekend coding and debugging, much to the irritation of my gf. ;-) So far total shareware payments for Cast Away = $7. ;-)

• MAJOR UPDATE!
• Greatly improved flexibility in handling podcasts.
• Options per podcast went from 5 to 19.
• Separate handling of short and long episodes of a podcast
• Separate handling of over-rides for short / long podcasts and for removing / unchecking. (Making 4 groups of over-rides).
• New over-rides: size cap in megabytes, keep latest X episodes, and keep unheard.
• Detailed results reporting in plain language.
• Test mode provides ability to test settings without removing or unchecking episodes.
• Rewrote information tab and further improvements to tool tips.
• Resizable interface.
• Fixed an interface incompatibility with Panther introduced in last version.
• Added ability to immediately remove files rather than trash to avoid empty trash problems.
• Better internal debug info that can be copied and sent to developer.


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Woot!

Thanks for the quick work! I'll have to check it out this week.

Doc

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and, as a result of adding all the new features in 1.5, people complained the interface was too complicated (as I thought they would), so I worked all day yesterday and designed another more intuitive interface with 1.6.

I've got one more idea in mind, but need to figure out a technical limitation first.

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Just FYI, Cast Away is now a lot more than it was before. It now can check for new podcasts and play them, and has a built-in wake and sleep timer.

If you haven't tried it lately, please try again, there have been a lot of enhancements.

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I'm a light podcast listener/viewer without an iPod. All I'd like (for now) is to "unGet" a podcast, i.e. delete its data file and revert its iTunes entry to the original state with the "Get" button. The intention is to automatically retrieve new podcasts but have the ability to remove their data file while preserving their iTunes entries without them becoming "orphans" (i.e. iTunes entries w/o files).

In other words, I want to free up disk space by deleting certain podcasts that have been automatically retrieved while retaining the ability to download them again later. Does Cast Away have that sort of "unGet podcast" functionality?

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well i believe if u delete all episodes of a podcast you've subscribed to, you are left with the reference only -- a disclosure triangle with no episodes below it. cast away will achieve that state, or you can just delete them manually if u want.

then if you want to fetch again you'd click unsubscribe and then subscribe.

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