I'm missing the DL podcast timestamps / chapters

I humbly plea for the quick return of DL podcast timestamps/chapters. What happened? Thx for the great podcasts! Luv them all. Cheers. PS: I use the Podcast Addict android app.

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I missed your post when I was searching so I posted as well. I’ll link to mine here also for visibility. Couldn’t agree with you more.

https://forum.tuxdigital.com/t/show-notes-availability-in-podcast-apps/5219/4

I noticed that starting with episode 275, the show notes are no longer available on my podcast app (Pocket Casts) or any podcast app for that matter. I’m wondering why this decision was made. When I’m out on the road, or hiking/biking, it’s very convenient to open my already open podcast app, click the notes tab and hit the link for whatever has been mentioned that interest me. It allows me to make a quick reminder for what it is I want to go back and reference when I’m home. Now, I’ve got the extra steps of clicking on the link to open the not-already-open browser, waiting for the page to load, scrolling down to what I’m looking for and opening that item in yet another tab. I know it sounds silly, but when you’re an efficiency person, at the end of the day, those seconds count. My only guess is that it’s an attempt to draw website traffic. Which, I appreciate, but it doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies. If I’m wrong, please feel free to correct me. I really just miss my in-app show notes. Thanks all.

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Seems like you’re not the only one.

I’ve noticed this as well. In Antenna Pod the show notes just say “An error occured. Try watching this video on youtube, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.”

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Shoot! I searched before I posted, but I had a little tunnel vision and only searched for “show notes”.

Glad I’m not the only one! Thanks for taking the time to put in your two cents. :+1:t2:

MODS: feel free to combine my post with the other.

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I merged the two, thanks @Ethanol. I’ll go hunting.

I think it happens because it redirects now to Tux Digital, where the full show notes are. I see the same here with newsboat, now I have to open the website instead of reading the show notes from within the program that takes the info from DLN.

I guess if I were to change the link to the new RSS feed I would be able to read the show notes like before. Too lazy for that now.

I cannot even remember when that merge/change happened. I am always far behind the episodes.

That’s a negative, Ghost Rider vinylninja, canonical RSS feed is still https://destinationlinux.org/feed/mp3 on both Apple and Google Podcasts and chapters with timestamps have not been included in the RSS feed since Episode 274.

I feel like this is something that should be answered by a host. This website/community/whatever is not so big that they haven’t seen this. There are still single digit posts on a daily basis. And it’s 100% intentional. There isn’t an error issued in the notes section. It’s a redirect. That means someone placed it there. What we need is an answer from the folks in charge.

The communication and timestamp/chapter delays are my fault.

I reached out days earlier to relay information which I received immediately and the delay was their expectation I had a reason for delaying it.

As for the timestamps/chapters DLN is dead center in a period of transition which is consuming time that was barely available to begin with. Some things will be strangely delayed but these delays will be temporary.

This task would not have been delayed had I provided adequate assistance in areas i’m responsible for which couldn’t have been anticipated by DLN. Michael will simply work on everything that needs to be done whether someone was supposed to do it or not.

We’re on episode 280. Episodes 278 and 275 are the one’s missing timestamp/chapter input and i’ll report as that’s completed.

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@Ulfnic thanks for the explanation. I’m not sure I understand the issues, but I get the gist of what you’re saying and I’m happy to hear it’s being worked on. I can’t speak for others, but when transitions are taking place and little things slip or change, I get nervous. I’ve just seen too many things go sideways. I’m very glad to hear that’s not that case. Thanks again for all the hard work.

FYI I’m missing chapter metadata on more than just the two episodes. I also don’t care about it too much so don’t over work yourselves.

Edit: also FYI there is a difference between the embedded podcast chapters I believe are being talked about in this thread and the chapter time stamps on the TuxDigi website.

That is true. I checked, I use the same RSS feed here but I cannot see the show notes. I have to open another link, that does open the Tux Digital website where they are included. That is what I wanted to say. So I thought there might be another feed.
Anyway it is not a big problem for me.

I think that is where the confusion is coming from.

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Thanks Pat, if you could list them here it’d be a big help. Any amount of detail goes a long way.

I’m using Podcast Addict app on Android and seems the timestamps were missing? Not a big deal but I do enjoy jumping right to the segments I most want to hear. Thanks for all the great podcasts! As a relative newbie to Ubuntu I love how your shows help me understand the wider world of Linux and FLOSS. Cheers! :blush: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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While there are timestamps missing from this particular episode I tend to give Michael the benefit of the doubt.

From my own attempts at embedding chapters in MP3s (the format the audio podcast is distributed in) they seem to randomly reject their timestamps even if ffmpeg says they are there. (Or, possibly more accurately, the podcast application has trouble correctly reading them :person_shrugging:)

I’ve yet to see this problem with M4A (MP4) files and, as an unrelated note, would love it if TuxDigital went with this format for audio podcasts.

Really late edit: This doesn’t even get into whether or not the podcast app itself has support for these extra flairs and flourishes. Based on my quick and dirty method of installing and testing all the podcast apps on flathub, on Linux support for these seems to be minimal. I no longer have an Android-based device to test the android podcast apps.

I am not sure why sometimes the chapters work and sometimes they dont. I will look into that for the next episode. There could be times I dont have time to make them, I have done that before due to stress of getting an episode released at midnight. Another possibility is the chapters are not being embedded properly into the MP3 for some reason. Another option is that the app does not support chapters in the way we do them. So in the next episode I will attempt to correct for the embedding and for the app detection stuff.

  • I will ask that people here reply with updates if they chapters work again for the next couple of episodes as I try new stuff

As for links in the shownotes not being on the podcast apps is because we rebranded the network and with that rebranding we are using tuxdigital.com as the new website for all episodes of each show. The links to take you to tuxdigital.com for the full show notes so we can grab peoples attention about the brand change and also to help with SEO. If the show notes were fully in the podcast apps then this would be contrary to the previous listed goals. Once the transition is complete then going back to that previous style might be an option but the current way helps with traffic to the main network site and thus improve awareness of the brand change. We still have a fair amount of things to do for this brand change. I hope this doesn’t bother anyone but at the moment I feel it is necessary for the transformation.

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I made some changes this week to the chapters to hopefully make them more reliable in various podcast apps. Please let me know whether or not these changes work for those in this thread that were having issues.

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That’s a chapters negative on Apple Podcasts and Overcast on iOS. Pocket Casts is refusing to realize there is a new episode but I’ll report back when it does. No chapters in Pocket Casts on iOS either.

No chapters in Pocket Casts but there are timestamps in the show notes.

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