Story MetaData

[Unblinking]

I just have a couple suggestions for the mp3 metadata when posting a new Podcastle story.  I'm not trying to bash or anything, these are meant as helpful comments only.  It's not that these things bother me a great deal, but having the metadata set up in certain ways can be handy for listeners, and if it's just as easy to do it one way as another then you might want to consider it:

1.  I like when the "Artist" name is the author of the story.  When I start playing a new mp3 it shows me three things immediately:  title, artist, and total time.  When the "Artist" is the author, then that gives me more information immediately so, for instance, if I saw "Tim Pratt" there I can have certain expectations and for "Eugie Foster" other expections.  Sometimes the "Artist" is listed as "Podcastle" which is correct but not very helpful--All my Podcastle stories are in a Podcastle album, so I already know I'm listening to Podcastle.

2.  It's nice when the stories end up in numerical order on my iPod.  This is especially handy when listening to the backlog of one of the podcasts.  I like to listen to the stories in order, so if they're listed in order on the iPod then this is very handy.  Otherwise I spend the next 10 minutes scrolling through and looking for the next number, which isn't a great idea while driving.  I don't know if it alphabetizes based on file name or by something in the Metadata or what.  Pseudopod's stories mostly come up in order, so it's usually easy to find the newest one in that folder by scrolling to the end.

Anyway, just some ideas for you. 

[Liminal]

PodCastle producer here: I'm not sure which stories you are referring to that have "Podcastle" as the artist . . . but since I started producing episodes, (starting with episode 082) they should all have the author's name in the artist slot and should all be titled consistently as follows: "PodCastle XXX: Title of Story" where XXX is the episode number, so that should keep them in order. If that's not the case, let me know. And if you see any inconsistencies in the metadata after episode 082, also let me know.

Thanks!

[Scattercat]

Your efforts are appreciated, Liminal; it's immensely obvious (when downloading back episodes) when exactly you took over.  ;-)

[stePH]

PodCastle producer here: I'm not sure which stories you are referring to that have "Podcastle" as the artist . . .

I think he means the ones that have "Rachel Swirsky" as the artist when she didn't write the story, just like the Escape Pod episodes that list "Stephen Eley" as the artist.

[Unblinking]

Hello, some more suggestions on story metadata, to revive this long-dead thread.

1.  It makes finding files so much more easier, if the Metadata "Track Number" is set equal to the episode number.  So episode 179, would be labeled as track #179.  Right now, Podcastle episodes show up in a seemingly random order on my iPod.  (well, actually they're alphebetized by the "Artist" field, so usually grouped by story author, but that's not useful if I'm trying to listen in chronological order).  Podcastle is the only podcast I listen to for which the episodes end up jumbled like this.  This makes for aggravation, because I listen while I'm driving, and I don't want to look at the iPod unless it's necessary.  I end up listening to nothing until the next stoplight at which point I scan through the whole folder looking for the episode number in the title .
--Since I'm listening to a backlog of PC episodes right now, I just altered the metadata myself.  Ahhhh, so nice, now I can just start at an episode, and when it's finished the next chronological episode plays without any searching necessary.

2.  The Album title.  In quite a few of the recent episodes (including the PC Miniature that I downloaded last night), the Album Title has been "Podcastle<space>" instead of "Podcastle".  You would think that the iPod would be able to sort these into the same folder, the whitespace being invisible and unimportant.  But it doesn't.  I end up with two separate folders, and once again am frustrated, trying to drive and find these files that I will never find because they're not in the right folder, at which point I'll skip the episode until I can go home to iTunes and find the space and alter the metadata to make the sorting work.
--Usually this doesn't happen, but it's happened half a dozen times in the last 10 episodes, which I found while I was grabbing all the eps for my listening of backlog. 

[DKT]

Thanks for the feedback. Peter and I emailed some last night about this, and the changes should appear within the next couple of weeks.

[Unblinking]

Thanks for the feedback. Peter and I emailed some last night about this, and the changes should appear within the next couple of weeks.

Great!  Sorry to double up in email and on the forum.  After I emailed yesterday I thought "DKT might not even be the person I should talk to about this", and so I thought I'd post  the same ideas here to make it easier for the appropriate person to find it.