Hi Karen,
Are you using a different podcatcher for the podcasts? When you say
you were subscribed via e-mail do you meant that they e-mailed the
podcast as an attachment each time there was a new episode? Also, are
you playing these all on a Mac, or are you sharing with a Windows
machine?
If you have a Mac, then iTunes is on your system, and you can
certainly use it to subscribe to podcasts, and you can even subscribe
to them yourself, if you know the podcast feed. In most cases, this
is given as a link on the station's web page, and the feed address
might look like:
http://www.example.com/feed.xml
(It doesn't have to have the .xml extension, but that's the type of
file it is). Stations can actually provide you with a one-click link
to subscribe to podcasts in iTunes by changing the "http" prefix to
"itpc" (for "iTunes podcast"). Then, when you click on the link, or
copy it to your browser's address bar, you'll automatically be asked
whether you want to subscribe to this podcast in iTunes.
The answer to your main question is yes, you can use iTunes to
organize and automatically download podcasts, but then play them in
another music player. They'll be stored in a folder under your user
account:
"Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts"
under individual folders named for each podcast subscription. If your
Mac is new, and came loaded with iTunes 9, then the folder might be
named with "iTunes Media" instead of "iTunes Music":
"Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Podcasts"
You can then change the default app for opening your mp3 files (if you
haven't already done so) by selecting one of your podcasts a file in
Finder, then using "Get Info" (Command-I). Navigate in the Get Info
window to where you hear "Open with" then VO-Right arrow to the pop up
button, press it with VO-Space, and set it to the application you
want. If you VO-Right arrow from there, you'll hear "Use this
application to open all documents like this" followed by a "Change
all" button that you can press to change the default application used
to open the file. Close the Get Info window with Command-W when done.
Even if you don't change the default player app from "iTunes" to
another player, you can still play these podcasts without opening
iTunes by using QuickLook -- just press space bar on one of the
selected files and it will start playing. Press space bar again to
stop.
The only thing I'm not sure about is whether the subscription will
eventually stop adding episodes if none of the files ever gets played
in iTunes. There's a safeguard that keeps you from starting
subscriptions that you forget about and coming back some months later
to find that your disk has filled up!
Let me know if this is for iTunes on Windows. I'm also adding a
PostScript about another alternative if you want to play your music in
a file-based navigation way, but don't want to get into the details of
iTunes.
Cheers,
Esther
P.S. There's another easy way you can play your podcasts in iTunes but
not have to learn about navigating through iTunes if you only want to
use it for podcasts. You can place the folder that contains Podcasts
in the Dock. You'll have to navigate to the folder in the dock, and
then use the contextual menu (VO-Shift-M or Command-Down Arrow) to
change the view options to display as "Folder" instead of "Stack" and
to view as "List" or "Automatic" instead of "Fan", and each change
requires a separate instance of bringing up the menu to change the
checked option. Once you do that, you can navigate to this location
in the Dock (e.g. VO-D, then press "p o" to go to the "Podcasts"
folder), VO-Space to bring up an alphabetized menu list of the podcast
subscription folders in iTunes, Right arrow to the subfolders, and
arrow down (or type the first letters) of the episode you want. Press
enter to start the track playing in iTunes. Press space bar to stop
if you're in iTunes. If you want to switch apps (to have as little to
do with iTunes as possible), use Command-Tab to switch to a different
application while iTunes is playing. You can always use Fn+F8 (one of
the Mac's media keys on keyboards from the last 3 years) to play/pause
the track, Fn+F7 to rewind, Fn+F9 to fast forward, Fn+F10 to mute
sound, Fn+F11 to lower volume, and Fn+F12 to raise volume. The media
keys work for third party apps, too, and your application does not
have to be in the foreground for these keys to work. If you play
tracks this way, you can take advantage of the fact that podcasts you
subscribe to and play in iTunes will automatically "remember" the last
played position and resume playback from there. This does not happen
if you play the same tracks in another media player. Write back if
you want more details about how to do this.
Karen Lewellen wrote:
Hi Esther,
asking this out of curiosity?
We have a station here n Toronto who has just switched to providing
their podcasts only via itunes, as in the link looks for itnues on
your computer before even letting you consider getting the show,
smiles.
It is frustrating as I was previously subscribed via e-mail, and I
am not an itunes user.
is there any way to break the cycle? to for example get someone to
subscribe me for the podcast at itunes, but not require itunes after
that is done, allowing me to use my own programs for playing podcasts?
The hint given is that itunes is for organizing only, even though I
know you can play things there too.
Hope my question makes sense,
Karen
On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Esther wrote:
Hi Sarah,
I've always been able to use either method for subscribing to
podcasts in iTunes: (1) finding the podcast in the iTunes Store and
subscribing or (2) add the podcast feed in the Advanced menu of
iTunes. Admittedly, I don't use the second method as often now,
since if I use the iTunes Store podcasts pages I have a lot more
options for inspecting episodes and content, and even for providing
a direct link to a specific episode. I generally only use the
Advanced menu to subscribe when the podcast has no entry in the
iTunes Store podcast pages. For example, Serotek's podcast series
is not at the iTunes Store, so I use the feed to subscribe:
http://serotalk.com/feed
The usual problem people have with the "Subscribe to podcast" menu
option under the Advanced menu is that they may be using an address
that is not a feed. Entering:
http://www.blindcooltech.com/bct.xml
works for Blind Cool Tech subscriptions, but entering the main BCT
web page address does not. Some podcast distributors change their
feed addresses. In that case, your entries for the podcast series
will be grouped under a second subscription with the same name.
This happened with the BBC Radio 4 "In Our Times" podcast a couple
of years ago -- I had the original podcast feed added from their
web page, and it stopped updating correctly and could not be fixed
even by refreshing the feed. So I had to switch my subscription as
though I were starting as a new subscriber at the iTunes Store.
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
Sarah Alawami wrote:
To use a feed for the adv anced subscribing to podcasts fails
almost every time initunes. only when I had an actuall itunes feed
di I get that to work. I wonder why..
On Mar 30, 2010, at 4:14 AM, Esther wrote:
> Hello Martin,
> > There are actually two issues you are experiencing in
downloading MP3 > files, and one is specific to the design of the
Blind Cool Tech web > pages: you first have to interact (VO+Shift
+Down Arrow) with the link > entry before you can use either of
the suggestions that were made (e.g. > bring up the context menu
with VO+Shift+M and find the option to download > the linked item
or to save it as a file, or use the keyboard shortcut of > Option
+Enter to force downloading of the file).
> > I usually access the Blind Cool Tech RSS feed at:
> http://www.blindcooltech.com/bct.xml
> instead of using the main web page for this reason, and also
because the > feed page is much faster to load as well as not
having the links embedded > in elements so that you first have to
interact to access them. However, > only the 40 latest episodes
are listed on the feed site, so you may need > to go to the main
BCT site for earlier episodes. You can also subscribe > to the
Blind Cool Tech podcasts in iTunes by navigating to the "Advanced"
> menu on the iTunes menu bar (VO+Shift+M then press "A"),
arrowing down to > "Subscribe to Podcast…", pressing Enter, and
then typing or pasting in > the feed address into the dialogue
window that comes up, and press > (VO-Space) the "OK" button.
> > The podcasts will show up in iTunes under the "Podcasts"
playlists. > You'll need to select this in the sources table of
iTunes (after > interacting), then navigate to the Songs table,
interact, and expand the > list of podcasts with VO-Shift-
Backslash. Then you can start any episode > playing by pressing
enter on the highlighted episode and pressing the > space bar to
pause/resume play.
> > HTH. Subscribing to a podcast is not usually so involved;
they still > haven't fixed the bug in the Blind Cool Tech episodes
listed at the > iTunes feed that cropped up a couple of years ago.
You might just be able > to use the "Subscribe" button at the
iTunes Store, but the way I've > outlined will work for sure.
> > Cheers,
> > Esther
> > On 30 Mar 2010, at 00:46, Scott Howell wrote:
> > > One final suggestion. You can always use VO-command-f5 to
bring the > > mouse focus to that link, hold control and then
click the physical > > mouse. That will bring up the context menu.
> > On Mar 30, 2010, at 6:33 AM, M BROWN wrote:
> > > > > Thank all those who responded to my query about
downloading MP3 > > > files. However, none of the suggestions have
worked. I have tried > > > holding down the shift/control/option
keys while pressing the letter > > > M. This does bring up a menu,
but within that menu there is nothing > > > about saving target or
anything similar. I have also held down the > > > option key and
pressed enter while on the link for the file I want to > > >
download. This merely downloads a html document relating to the >
> > archive page of the Blind Cool Tec site. Any further
suggestions > > > would be very much appreciated.
> > > Kind regards, Martin
> > > > >
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