Probably just a bad RSS feed, but thought I'd check...

[bill724]

Hi Marcus/everyone,

I'm getting podcasts from 2008 showing up as new downloads in this podcast feed:

http://www.fastlanedaily.com/rss

Coincidentally (?) it's the same feed that was causing me header issues in July, so it may just be that these Next New Networks guys just don't put out a good feed. I think an email from Marcus straightened them out last time.

PodTrapper is getting the new episodes, too, but I'm also picking up duplicates from last November.

Any thoughts?

-Bill.

[arkolbus]

This happens to me occasionally (with different feeds). My hunch is that they're changing the file name (or some other part of the URL). By default, PT matches duplicates by URL, so when PT sees a URL that it hasn't seen before, it assumes it's a new file and downloads.

It'd be hard to confirm without being able to see an earlier version of the feed. Perhaps you can email them and find out if they changed anything. Odds are they don't do this often, so I wouldn't worry about it. This probably isn't directly related to the header problem, but both are signs of poor feed management, and a lack of understanding of how RSS aggregators work.

If you want to stop "old" episodes from redownloading, you can delete them from the episode view. If you delete an undownloaded episode, PT won't download it. You can go to the episode view for the podcast in PT, highlight the latest "old" episode, and go to menu->"delete below". Make sure the episodes are sorted from newest to oldest in this view. Alternatively, you can manually delete each episode from this view.

If this happens often for any particular podcast, you can also change the podcast settings to "Match duplicates by: Title" (provided the titles are unique).

[bill724]

Thanks Arkolbus. Interesting, that it just started.

To be clear on what happens to me for this feed, I get two podcast updates a day, one from "Nov 27, 2009" and one from "Nov 27, 2008". Since PT sorts by that name (at least that's what it appears to do) I get them interleaved with every other line being a 2008 episode. And if I get rid of them, the next day, there's another new 2008 episode mixed in with the new 2009 episode. This has been happening consistently with this feed for a while (but doesn't happen with any of my other feeds). It's sort of fun to get two a day, but since it's sort of "news" it's weird to be watching and see announcements from last year.

When I look through the raw feed, everything looks ok, with old episodes going back further than the year-old ones that I'm picking up. That said, I don't think I got one on 11/30, so maybe the other guys fixed their feed right before I sent this posting...

[arkolbus]

How long has this been happening? Are there any "Not Downloaded"/"Waiting to Download"/"Not Marked for Download"/etc. episodes for this podcast when you look on PT's main screen or PT's episode list?

If they're interleaved, then its probably sorting by podcast, not date (if its sorting at all). If its not sorting, then the episodes appear in the order in which they were downloaded.

There is no episode in the feed for 11/30/08, so that's probably why you didn't get one.

It's very strange that this is happening, but my hunch is that it's still something to do with the way the feed is being managed. I don't know why PT would download an episode that's exactly one year old otherwise. It's probably worth sending them an email to find out.

[bill724]

I have no "Not Downloaded" or ""Waiting to Download" episodes. All I see in PodTrapper for this one are the newly downloaded episodes (I've already done a "delete below"). So when I just opened this one up, it has caught up with today and I have 5 episodes waiting for me: Dec 1, 2009; Dec 1, 2008; Nov 28, 2008; Nov 27, 2009; and Nov 27, 2008. Nothing below that. From the main screen it just says, "5 Ready" (doesn't have anything "not downloaded"). I'm not sure when it started doing this, but it's been doing it for at least a month.

I'll send them an email and see. FWIW, it's better to get too many than to miss episodes and I'm not paying for the bandwidth over WLAN or through desktop, so it's just a little extra deleting. But it is weird. I did upgrade to the 2.5.5 beta which did the same thing today (probably more evidence that it's the feed).

Thanks for your advice.

- Bill.

[marwatk]

Hi guys,

What it looks like is happening here is that they're publishing a fixed number of podcasts greater than the number podtrapper chooses to 'see' by default (100). Because some podcasts publish in first->last order, and some in last->first, podtrapper chooses to 'see' the first and last parts, and ignores the middle. For example, if it was set to 'see' 2 episodes, and the feed had episodes 5, 6, and 7 in that order, podtrapper would keep track of 5 and 7. But, if it then published episode 8, and dropped 5, it would now 'see' 6 and 8, seeing both as 'new' even though 6 was there previously. I think that's what's happening here.

I had thought that most podcasts that published huge numbers of episodes were just publishing the complete back catalog, but it looks like this podcast is publishing the most recent 150 or so, dropping old ones as new ones are published.

You can permanently 'fix' it by increasing the number of episodes PodTrapper chooses to 'see' on the Storage Settings screen. Then you can 'Update and sort' from the list view and it'll put them in the proper order. The downside is it increases the memory requirements, but on newer devices (Bold, Tour, Storm, etc) that shouldn't be an issue. (The whole concept of 'see'ing only some of the feed is a memory optimization that PodTrapper takes).

Hope that helps, let me know if any of it doesn't make sense.

-Marcus

[bill724]

Interesting. OK, I've upped the number to 250 to see what happens. First thing I noticed was a zillion old "not marked for download" episodes showed up in my other podcasts, so I'm going through and doing "delete below" a lot, but that should be a one-time issue. I'll let you know if this solves my problem tomorrow...

Marcus, as always, thanks for the great program and the awesome support!

- Bill.

[bill724]

This did solve the problem for me (sorry for the slow confirmation). As always, thanks for the great, personal support Marcus!

- Bill.