Podcasts: interrupted downloads cannot be completed, deleted downloads canot be reloaded

[Irios]

Binary package hint: rhythmbox

If episodes are ever del
I can erase downloaded podcasts, and these options are offered:

* Delete the _reference_ to the podcast, but keep the sound file
* Delete both the reference and the sound file.

The problems I find with this are:

1) The words describing the choice are very badly chosen, what is being offered is far from obvious.
2) Incomplete downloads cannot be completed or reloaded.
3) With the first option, a sound file will remain hidden somewhere in the file system that Rhythmbox will not show or play (which I find it far from useful).
4) With the second option, both the reference and the soundfile will be gone, but with no way to ever reload them beyond deleting _all_ the episodes in that podcast, unsubscribing, resubscribing, and downloading again all the episodes of interest -- if still available.

Solution:

* The first option should be dismissed, as it's purpose is really confusing.
* The option to delete both the soundfile and the reference should be clearly described.
* An option to only delete the sound file while keeping the reference should be offered in the episode context menu.
* An option to reload the episode list should be offered in the podcast context menu.
* If someone wants to keep the files but not the references, he or she can already drag them into a folder in Nautilus.

This covers all use cases, would permit freeing storage space while allowing reloading discarded episodes or incomplete downloads.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat May 31 17:22:26 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/rhythmbox
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: rhythmbox 0.11.5-0ubuntu6
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=es_ES.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: rhythmbox
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-17-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report. could you describe easy steps to trigger the bug? the description is not really clear. could you also report the bug on bugzilla.gnome.org directly since that seems to be an upstream issue and you know how to trigger the bug so you can reply to their comments

[Irios (irios)]

To trigger the bug:

* Select a podcast you are subscribed to, with some episodes already
downloaded. A list is shown of episodes that are available at the podcast
provider, with more information available on those that have already been
downloaded.

* Right-click on an episode that has already been downloaded. Select the
option to delete the podcast. A dialog box with three buttons will pop up.
One is Cancel. Another says "Delete the episode only". The other says
"Delete the episode and the file"

At this point, many people will wonder what exactly is "the episode" and
what is "the file". This should really be clarified.

* If the option "delete episode and file" is chosen, that episode's entry
disappears from the list. Presumably, the sound file has also been erased
from the file system.

* If the option "delete episode only" is chosen, that episode's entry
disappears from the list. The sound file remains somewhere in the file
system, but where, or why, is not really clear. *I* do know the file is
somewhere below the folder that has been chosen for podcast downloads, but I
doubt that a naive user will easily find it; and even then, finding the lost
episode in its folder is very difficult, because filenames for soundfiles
are not the same as episode names. And, in any case, there are no options to
add it again to Rhythmbox.

If I wanted to recover disk space by deleting old episodes, I'd have to use
the "delete episode and file" option, but then all references to those
episodes would be forever lost, with no way offered to download again. There
should be an option to delete the sound file only, that still left me with
the entry in the index. Or an option to reload the full list of available
episodes.

If I want to clear the episode index by erasing the oldest ones, the two
current options would do, However, "delete episode only" will leave
difficult to purge sound files dormant in the filesystem. And Rhythmbox
offers no way to download the full episode list again from the provider.

The other problem is when a podcast download does not finish successfully:
In those cases, a partial file may be kept by Rhythmbox, but there is no way
to resume the download, and there is no way to delete the incomplete file
and then fully reload, because the podcast index entry would be
irrecoverably deleted with the sound file.

That's why I say that to correct the problem, the options in the dialog
should be:

* Delete soundfile only
* Delete soundfile and index entry.

AND there should be an option in the podcast menu to refresh the full
episode list. Currently, the podcast refresh option only gets the index
entries for NEW episodes.

With these three changes, it would be easy to recover disk space by only
deleting the soundfiles; it would be easy to redo failed downloads, by
deleting the failed soundfile and downloading again; and it would be easy to
get rid of old episodes, but the possibility would remain to get at them
again.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the request is similar to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436610, you should describe one issue by bug though, adding an upstream bug watch, the ubuntu team has not the ressources to work on such changes right now and those should rather be discussed on bugzilla.gnome.org

[Ben (ben2talk)]

I have problems mostly when my internet connection is interrupted. My apartment is set up so that I must log in through a web browser, so when I am logged out, I am sent a login.php from the server. Browsing podcast directories revealed that one or two download files have been interrupted and renamed/replaced.

Right now I am considering giving Banshee or Exaille a trial to see if the problem is similar with them - to be honest, I'd be much happier to use something lightweight like gpodder if it had a function to resume - I only want to use Rhythmbox/ the player/ to present me with options to play the files rather than have to autostart it to get the downloads going.

gpodder is far behind in some respects - at least Rhythmbox uses a logical English archiving system to save the files.

The worst aspect is that damaged downloads are lost and cannot be recovered through the podcatcher.