Technical Problems with Escape Pod Podcasts

[marcopolo]

I am having trouble with some of Escape Pod's podcasts. 
 
I am using iTunes and a Sanyo MP3 player.  The file comes from iTunes fine.  It appears ok in the player's window but when I try to find it on the player it shows up as an empty file called "unknown".  Not a bad track, just an empty unknown file.
 
This doesn't happen with any other podcast and not all of yours.  EP224, "The Ghost in The Death Trap",  copied with no problems as did EP219, "Sleepy Joe" but those between the two and EP225 today were seen as  "unknown".

I have tried to download from the Escape Pod website and have unsubscribed and resubsribed on iTunes.  No luck.

iTunes support sent me to your support, your support sent me here.

Thanks in advance.


 

[Ben Phillips]

iTunes support sent you away because if you got the file it's probably not an iTunes problem.  If the player isn't reading the tags then that isn't, as far as I can tell from looking at the files you named, because the tags aren't there.  Although I hope someone else on this forum might know more about Sanyo players than I do and be able to help you, it definitely sounds like the problem has something to do with the player and not the files.  They're all 96 kbps joint stereo mp3s with the tags set properly (when I look at them in iTunes, at least).  Wish I could be of more help.

[marcopolo]

Thanks for the reply.

My first thought was player problems; however, Escape Pod is the only one of my dozen of so podcast subscriptions with this problem (so far) and that problem started only recently -- within the last month or so.  The first nine months or more were fine. 

Again, I can use some of the files.  Right now it's about one in four.  I don't see any glaring differences between the two sets.  Assuming all files are tagged the same, they should all look the same to the player, right?

I don't know squat.  I just download, use what I can, and delete the rest.  I just thought it would be nice to have more Escape Pod in the mix.

[klossner]

(Yeah, I know this is a very late response ...)

The episodes between EP219 and EP224, as well as EP225 and EP226, had blank values for the "Genre" and "Year" tags.  I don't know anything about iTunes but I'll guess that, if you fill in those tags, the files will work on your player.

If you use Windows, the Mp3tag program will do just what you need.  (If you use MacOS, I'm clueless.)  MP3 tags have been hit-and-miss throughout Escape Pod's run.  EP235, EP236, and EP238 have blank "Title" fields.  Sometimes "Artist" is the story author, sometimes it's "Escape Pod", sometimes it's "editor@escapepod.org".  I fix all this up before loading it onto my phone (an old Palm Treo) so the MP3 player ap won't have a fit.