Re: Car Cast - Podcast Player

[Robert Herrmann]

Thanks for your feedback.

CarCast is a simple tool, but sometimes simplicity missed the mark... but I have a couple of thoughts.

1) When I want to "mark an episode for deleting" from the player screen, I will just move the slider to the end.     This tells carcass that I listened to it.

2)  When I have a lot of podcasts loaded (like 30 or so), I will - before driving or doing the dishes - go into the podcasts screen and rearrange the podcasts (it is crude - but you can move bunches of podcasts up or down, you can delete a range of podcasts, etc...)  - I call this phase curation of the podcasts.

3) each subscription can be toggled to download the podcasts in the reverse order.    It is a per podcast setting.     This is important for audiobooks which you really want to listen to chapters from oldest to newset.      Although this isn't perfect, because each time it is run it still gets only the newest - but at least they are ordered from old to new for playback.

I like your other ideas, but CarCast isn't currently getting active development :-(

-bob

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 11:20 AM Christian Burkert <c.bu...@gmx.net> wrote:

Dear Bob,

it is very nice of you to take some time and read about my problems. To point out my difficulties let me describe my usage of the app:

I subscribed two different podcast, let's say A and B. Both produce one episode each day. I do download about once a week. Therefor, after the download, there are 14 new episodes shown in the "podcasts" page of the app. All right?
The newest episode is the first in the list and that is the opposite of what I need, because the episodes are played back in order from top to bottom, meaning from newest to oldest. The content of each episode is based on the content of the predecessor. To be able to follow the story line, a have to play back the episodes in reverse order. So I have to stop playback manually at the end of each episode and klick the next one (above) separately. The playback order in automatic playback mode is "wrong" for my purpose.
I need a possibility to her the episodes in the order from old to new!

Another handicap arises from my lazy listening manner. I don't listen regularly. Sometimes, there are new episodes of four weeks waiting to be heard. The order in which the episodes are shown is
A1, A2, ... A7, (the first seven episodes of podcast A), then
B1, B2, ..., B7, (podcast B)
A8, A9, ..., A14, (continuing podcast A), then switching back to podcast B:
B8, B9, ...
and so on. This means, listening to all downloaded episodes results in switching between podcast A and podcast B instead of listen to all 28 episodes of podcast A completely and then going to the 28 episodes of podcast B. In this case, a possibility to sort the podcast in alphabetical order (or instead in an order corresponding to the name of the podcast) would be fine.

Thinking of both requirements, a sorting algorithm (optional for alphabetical or date order, better in combination) in the "podcasts" view would be a good solution. I know that it would mean a lot of work to implement this. Therefore I don't dare asking. But maybe a possibility to switch the order from new-old to old-new could help me a lot. And it would be as helpful to, if the download date (better: release date) could be seen on the "podcasts" page. If there is not enough space to show both date and duration, maybe the user could choose his favorite in the properties.

And, while I am thinking of improvements: Often I start an episode and realize, that it does not interest me. So I skip to the next episode. Than the skipped episode is not marked for automatically erasure. It would be nice to have an option in the preferences to decide, whether a skipped episode is marked for deletion or not. As you could imagine, I would prefer the first.
What do you think of the Idea of combining the "podcasts" page and the "playback controls" page, as in the appended image? Swiping an entry to the right could mean: Delete it. To the left: Prevent it from automatically deleting. Holding and moving down or up: Change position in list. A context menu could provide further options as "move to top", "move to the bottom", "delete this and all above", ... The "download podcasts" page could be abandoned and the functionality could be moved to the three-point-menu by adding a "download podcasts" entry. That would make the app "leaner" and easier to use.

Please don't misunderstand me: I am not asking you to do all this changes. I was only dreaming, what COULD improve the app, from my point of view, in case that you should decide someday to update the app. Get me right: I am glad that I can use the app and that you share it for free. If I had a wish, I would be happy with the possibility to sort the episodes by date from old to new. That is the thing I would ask you for.

Christian

----- original message-----
From: Robert Herrmann <b...@jadn.com>
Send: Sunday, April 5th 2020 18:10
To: C. Burkert <c.bu...@gmx.net>; carcas...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Car Cast Pro - Podcast Player


Hi Christian,

What do you mean?    You mean across multiple feeds/subscriptions?

-bob



On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 11:09 AM C. Burkert <c.bu...@gmx.net <mailto:c.bu...@gmx.net> > wrote:


        Hi,

        I like Car Cast a lot because of the possibility to download podcasts automatically. Thanks a lot for this app!
        I use the app to hear series of podcasts in a rush. There is only one thing that is bothering me: Unfortunately there is no way to put the downloaded episodes in chronological order.

        Do you think that there is a possibility to add this feature in near future? Maybe I could help somehow?

        Yours
        Christian Burkert

[Robert Herrmann]

Yikes!  CarCast is and almost always has been on github.    

      https://github.com/bherrmann7/Car-Cast

That is not supposed to be a secret!

-bob

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 4:26 AM Christian Burkert <c.bu...@gmx.net> wrote:

Hi Bob,

thanks for your quick reply! It would be a pitty if the App should not be develop further.  Did you think of putting it to Github (or something equal) to gather a little community of interested developers?

Christian

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Robert Herrmann <b...@jadn.com>
Gesendet: Freitag, 10. April 2020 23:51
An: Christian Burkert <c.bu...@gmx.net>; carcas...@googlegroups.com
Betreff: Re: Car Cast - Podcast Player

Thanks for your feedback.

CarCast is a simple tool, but sometimes simplicity missed the mark... but I have a couple of thoughts.

1) When I want to "mark an episode for deleting" from the player screen, I will just move the slider to the end.     This tells carcass that I listened to it.

2)  When I have a lot of podcasts loaded (like 30 or so), I will - before driving or doing the dishes - go into the podcasts screen and rearrange the podcasts (it is crude - but you can move bunches of podcasts up or down, you can delete a range of podcasts, etc...)  - I call this phase curation of the podcasts.

3) each subscription can be toggled to download the podcasts in the reverse order.    It is a per podcast setting.     This is important for audiobooks which you really want to listen to chapters from oldest to newset.      Although this isn't perfect, because each time it is run it still gets only the newest - but at least they are ordered from old to new for playback.

I like your other ideas, but CarCast isn't currently getting active development :-(

-bob