First off – before I get any upset emails like I did the last time I mentioned this – I am NOT replacing the regular MP3 feed!
But one of the things I was planning on announcing for show 300 is a new AAC feed. The benefit of an AAC version of the show is that if you’re listening in iTunes or an iPod, you can skip past the songs you don’t like and jump right to the next one (potentially missing gems that you might end up really liking after the first minute or two!). In addition, the album artwork, if there is any, shows up on the iPod screen, and/or in the iTunes window.
The process still takes me a while to complete, so the AAC shows may be posted a couple hours later than the MP3 versions, but I’m getting faster at this, and hope to have it down to a science before long.
Why am I announcing it well before the 300th show? So glad you asked. I’ve been putting a few shows in the feed and doing my own beta testing, but not being fully versed in how an AAC podcast should look, I’m looking for beta testers. Basically, you can subscribe to the feed below, and get the few AAC shows I’ve put up there. Have a look in iTunes, or on your iPod, and let me know what works and what doesn’t.
itpc://feeds.feedburner.com/CovervilleAAC
The above address is a “one-click” podcast subscription. Just click it, and if you have iTunes, it will automatically subscribe you to the feed.
Post your thoughts, ideas, and recommendations, and thank you for checking this out!
How do I skip songs in the iTunes interface using AAC?
well that’s weird. There used to be a button in iTunes that would let you jump to a chapter when you’re listening to chaptered podcast. At The very least, it used to show the little lines in the timeline at the top for each of the breaks.
Anyone out there know if that’s a preference that can be turned on?
Or am I imagining the whole thing?
Yeah, sure enough. Here’s the article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301880
I’ll see if I can find out why that’s not showing up.
Ahhh, there it is. The button’s gone, but when you’re listening to an enhanced podcast, you’ll now get a menu called “Chapters” in your menubar. Clicking that menu shows all the chapters in the show, and selecting any of them jumps you to that chapter.
Thanks to this link:
http://www.macuser.com/huh/now_you_see_the_chapters_menun.php?lsrc=murss
Are you not the alpha and we’re the Beta? 🙂
Seriously, happy to help and am hitting that link NOW!
Will let you know. The truth is though, there is very little I don’t like, but if that’s the case, I can hit the enter button on the ipod and just move through or back on the track.
LOVE the album covers against each track!
And the Chapters menu is really cool – great for listening again on the computer to a particular track (I am a car listener mostly). This is a really cool and useful feature IMO
Sound quality appears to be the same
DL time was about the same.
Well done Brian, on early Beta testing, this looks really good
Wayne
I doubt I will be moving forward through songs, but I sure as well be going back to re-hear them! I dunno how many times I rewinded the podcast to hear Nicole Sheridan’s “In Your Eyes”. Keep up the great work.
The links on the valentines show to Amazon.com were also good, and will allow a few bucks to flow to the Coverville coffers I hope! Now, if it could detect I am from the UK and direct me to Amazon.co.uk….
Good move Brian – happy to test it. I have a B&W 4G iPod so no album covers for me, but I’m sure I’ll use the chapters to go back and re-listen to tracks.
The great just got even better!
Hitting the right hand button on the wheel on a 5th Generation i-pod takes you to the start of the next track, and the album covers are all there too.
I guess this is all good, but I suppose some people will hear less of Brian if they can just skip to the track they want.
Listening right now to #298, and I LOVE the new features! Works great. Being able to skip to favorite songs is a wonderful feature. Don’t suppose you’ll go back and re-issue all 300 episodes in the AAC format? LOL.
Keep up the good work!
When viewing LIBRARY > Podcasts in Mac iTunes, some characters in the Description of the show show up as literal HTML encodings rather than the character. This happens for things like actual open and close quotes (as oppossed to simple quotes that show up on the MP3 podcasts in the Description column.
So where the description for show #298 appears like this for the MP3 podcast:
Here’s what’s on the show tonight:
for the AAC one it looks like:
Here’s what’s on the show tonight:
This could be a bug in iTunes or if you stick to simple quotes, simple dashes, no ellipses, etc, you should be fine.
On the other hand, I really like seeing line breaks in the description for the AAC podcast so there is one line per song – the MP3 one had everything smushed into one solid paragraph and was unreadable.
Well, poo. Your comment software is just too clever and fixed the broken example I tried to post. Let’s try again:
When viewing LIBRARY > Podcasts in Mac iTunes, some characters in the Description of the show show up as literal HTML encodings rather than the character. This happens for things like actual open and close quotes (as opposed to simple quotes that show up on the MP3 podcasts in the Description column).
So where the description for show #298 appears like this for the MP3 podcast:
Here’s what’s on the show tonight:
for the AAC one it looks like:
Here & # 8217;s what & # 8217;s on the show tonight:
This could be a bug in iTunes or if you stick to simple quotes, simple dashes, no ellipses, etc, you should be fine.
On the other hand, I really like seeing line breaks in the description for the AAC podcast so there is one line per song – the MP3 one had everything smushed into one solid paragraph and was unreadable.
A few more comments:
– Why not mark the end of the music track that ends a set as the start of the next chapter, namely the commentary for the next set. That would allow navigating all segments of the show, not just music.
– Why not include the URL for the band or the amazon.com link. Podcast chapters can include that information. See some of the podcasts at http://acappellau.com/ for examples. You may be able to include multiple links, I’m not sure. Most podcast producing software allows this, too.
Thank you so much! I have been wishing for this feature since I started listening to Coverville. Awesome show, keep it up.
Not only are the HTML entities coming through as entities instead of the proper characters (the #8217 problem described above) but the show description is cut off (unlike the primary feed which comes through 100% in iTunes).
I like the AAC feed… I am finding all sorts of features I didn’t know that you could do…
Thanks!
Love the AAC Feed. Thanks.
AAC feed is great and very useful. Thank You!