Could have sworn I typed my name on that post.

You don't have to use GarageBand. iTunes can do the same thing a lot easier.

When I first started listening to G&G, I was on dial-up. Downloading an episode literally took all night--I'd set it to go before I went to bed, and it'd get done around the time I got up. But, alas, Rob's an audio snob.

Even though I'm now on DSL, I still contend that dropping the bit rate wouldn't be noticeable to us mortals, and by freeing space on my hard drive, my Mac would be faster, so I'll still voice my vote for smaller files.

Then again, PBS' NPR encourages him.

But I figured the audiophile in Rob wouldn't let him use iTunes for that.

Interestingly, when iTunes converted the mp4 GB produced to an mp3, it doubled the size.

You can go into the iTunes settings and adjust the import settings to something smaller.

Our episodes used to be about 30 - 40 meg in size. They seem to be getting larger. I'm not sure if it's an increase in episode length or something else. We (Rob) will need to investigate.

You just have bigger ideas…or something like that.

Current setting would result in 30+MB for a file under 50 minutes in length.

You *are* running longer these days, but you could control for time by changing the bit rate a little, keeping the podcast length about the same.

We used to have a lower bit rate. The quality was something we didn't want to listen to. So, we increased it to a point we could handle. Quality over filesize.

But, we do need to shorten the episodes up. They've gotten a little on the long side.

Thanks for warning me about that. Guess I'll have to unsubscribe until I can afford a bigger iPod.

You could always just keep one episode...

T

First, I apologize if that sounded angry, miffed or anything else. It was just a reluctant acceptance of reality. Think of it being said with a sigh, not with a snarl.

Blame it on Apple, if you like, Tony, but iTunes doesn't make it at all easy to save different numbers of individual podcasts. I'd like it if it did, but it gives me the option to save a subset of the podcasts I subscribe to, and a setting for how many to load, but not a setting for individual podcasts. And, since I'm always discovering new ones and trying to catch up, I have it set for 10. (And yes, I've managed to hit that number of episodes between synch's all too often; I use the iPod instead of a car radio while driving and I've been known to hit 6-7 hours behind the wheel in a single day.) And the plain fact is I can't afford to give over that much of my iPod to G&G (or any other single podcast, for that matter; it's not particular to G&G, I'd have the same reaction to anyone else that wanted to monopolize that much of my available resources, it's just G&G so far are the only ones who make that level of demand). Three times since discovering G&G I've had to dump music from my venerable iPod nano (4GB) in order to make room for ever larger podcasts. I won't dump any more.

I'm not stalking off in a huff, just acknowledging that the size of 10 G&G podcasts makes them impractical for me at this moment in time. Think of G&G as the Ferrari that I can't afford on my limited budget (seems an especially apt analogy in view of the high-end, better-than-radio sound quality they're committed to). It's a luxury I can't support as part of my ordinary life; I'll have to listen to it only when I have the spare hour and half to sit in my office in front of the computer.

I didn't think you were huffy... I just didn't understand the problem :) Maybe I'm still not? Here's what I would do:

Delete the episode from iTunes manually after you've listened to it. That's what I do. It will remove it from your iPod then, automatically. I have to do this with my 8gb iPod, because I refuse to get rid of ANY music, lol, being a musician by trade and a web designer by necessity!

It's another step, but the podcast is worth the 10 seconds it takes, IMO.

And if it's just that you are not caught up... you can stop auto downloading the podcast, and just click "get" manually in iTunes and keep three or four at a time to get caught up. Then delete them after you've listened to them.

Blessings,
Tony

My setting is "10 most recent unheard" podcasts from each one. Like I said, I'm constantly adding new podcasts, so there are always some which have all 10 slots filled, while some others have only 1-2 entries, because I'm up to date with them.

For example, while I would have 10 G&G's, and 10 of NPR's "A Way With Words" (since someone mentioned NPR, I'll observe they run half the size of the G&G podcasts, despite being an hour long) since there are a large number of those I haven't heard, I only have 1 Rails Envy, 2 Agile Toolkits, etc., because I'm up to date on them.

I'm not saying I have 10 of every podcast. I have up to 10, depending upon how many are unlistened to.

Would you say this is actually a point against the iPod as a podcast playing tool? Would you say you would prefer to use an MP3 player that just shows up as a removable storage device, that you manually add and remove files to and from?

I could, after all, do that with my iPod if I wanted to. (There's a provision for manually synching it in iTunes.) I *love* the fact I can automatically download new podcasts to my computer when they're available without having to actively go out and look for them. That way I can spend the time I might have spent manually looking for the latest release of ones I want to follow actually looking for new ones. And I like the fact that all I have to do is plug in the iPod to have it loaded with the fresh content I find. I have plenty of things on my mind, the more mundane tasks that I can offload to a digital support assistant the more I like it. Life's too short to waste time manually doing things that can be automated (that's what attracted my to programming, you see). I value that process so highly I govern my choices based on how well providers work within those parameters. If you break my automation, you'd better have a good reason if you want to stay in rotation.

I want to focus on what I'm trying to do with my day, not waste time manually selecting and copying the files right now that I may or may not want to listen to tomorrow.

I'd like a more fine-grained control for the auto-load, perhaps, but give up the auto-load and go back to a manual process? No way!

Ok. Is there a Smart Playlist you could set up in iTunes that could help?

I believe that if you do that with a Smart Playlist then you’d have to stop synchronizing the podcast from the Podcast container in iTunes (so that it wouldn’t dump 10 episodes to the iPod) and then play back the podcast from the Music — not Podcasts — section of the iPod’s UI.

It looks as if you can use the name of the podcast in an Album query in iTunes. I’d also set “Podcast” to “is true.”

Haven't tried more than that …

Ok, here's what you can do, if you wanted to. If you don't, then don't sweat it! I just find the podcast amazingly helpful (most of the time)

1. Delete the podcast from your iPod and iTunes.
2. Download one episode of G&G in iTunes. Don't subscribe, just download the next episode you need.
3. Click the get button for the next two episdoes.
4. When you finish those episodes, delete the episodes in iTunes, and download the next three by clicking GET.

This way, you don't have ten episodes synicing to your iPod, just three.

Tony

You, obviously, use Drupal more than I do. (It bit me back in the v4 days, so I left town and never looked back. I was trying to use CCK to create some custom content driven by some javascript, and Drupal refused to execute the js unless I was in admin. I decided if it was going to be *that* hostile, I'd go find me some new friends to play with. Yes, I have a history of giving uppity software the boot. And I'm proud of it.)

I thought of limited d/l approach Tony. It just doesn't fit the way I'm working at the moment. (Oh, and it's simpler than you list: Step 4 doesn't need to delete, just needs to manually download the next x episodes. Of course, it auto-downloads the new ones every time one is available, so the list could grow from 3 to 6 or more in a few weeks, if I don't manage to get to the podcasts.)

As it is, I just discovered a podcast on church history, on Francis Schaeffer, and one from DTS, so I fear for what my iPod is going to do to me next time I sync. ;{>}

Well, iTunes can be quite a pain for some things. Apple tries to keep it simple which is good for 95% of the potential users. They try to make the decisions for us which is good for most people. If you want to do some crazy things iTunes isn't the way to go.

As for drupal.... like all systems I've used it makes me hostile on occasion. I understand the pain. :)

Keep in mind that iTunes can set podcast settings individually. Just control-click (or right-click) the podcast name, and you'll get a pop-up menu that allows you to customize that show's settings.

I listen to all of my podcasts via smart playlist. My favorites, or those covering news, go into the "Podcasts 1" playlist. "Podcasts 2" is for others, and "Podcasts 3" is for when I've listened to all of those. Sort by release date to make sure to listen in order. This also allows playing multiple shows without having to manually tell it to play the next show. You can even "stack" smart playlists by creating one to only get the least recent G&G, then in your "podcasts to load onto iPod" playlist, choose the "least recent G&G" playlist instead of the podcast itself, and as you listen to them, it'll automatically load the next one onto your iPod for you. (Basically, each smart folder is a separate part of a big boolean expression.) I also recommend creating a folder to put all your "scratch" playlists, the ones that only exist for the sake of others, just to keep them out of the way.)

This capability of iTunes leaves all other mp3 apps in the dust. I wish others, like Win Media Player & Zune Desktop would catch up, but they're nowhere close.

That doesn't apply to sync preferences. I can use it to downsample an entire set of podcasts, I suppose, but I'm lazy and that's too much work.

On a related bit, though, something Tony said triggered an idea of my own to try. It's a little tedious, and a little manual labor-intensive, but less than most I've seen so far, including keeping the auto-updates that are so valuable to me. I'm going to give it a try for a few days. If I focus my manual labor, maybe I can limit the time/effort to an acceptable level. Of course, it's always a trade; more time spent there means less time spent elsewhere.

(Interesting side-note: In the mean time I had cleared 10 G&G off my iPod and loaded nearly 30 fresh new podcasts, including some university lectures of over an hour, and had space left over.)

Sorry, forgot to add:

I do the smart playlist thing with my music right row, with smartlists by categories set up to automatically include new music I load into iTunes, and a second level of smartlist for each category set up to pick up x MB of music from that category that hasn't been listened to in the last y days (and another that picks up the xMB of top rated in that category). But I don't want to mix the podcasts with the audiobooks and the music on my iPod. Maybe I'm just being anal, but I like to keep them separate.

Maybe it'll explain more if I say I'm ADD, though not severe, and never sure what my brain is going to want/need to hear in the upcoming hours/days, and tend to obsess about it a little. I even keep a couple of playlists called "Stim Up" and "Stim Down" to help regulate its behavior when necessary.

If you tell it not to sync all podcasts but have podcasts in your playlists, it will only sync the podcasts in your playlists.

I don't need playlists for that, I can tell it which podcasts to sync directly from the podcast menu for the iPod, I just can't say "2 of these", "6 of these", etc.

What I'm trying for right now is this:

unchecking all the podcasts in G&G, then checking the two most recent ones (I started with 4, but had to cut back to 2 as they enlarged) I haven't listened to (iTunes only synchs items you've checked -- everything is checked by default). Then, before every new synch, I have to go look to see if I'm getting less than 2GG and go check the next one(s) if I am. It's tedious, and has resulted in me not getting *any* GG on my iPod because I've forgotten to check the numbers first. But it's the only way I can have podcasts that huge trailing me around. And this way I didn't have to delete the ones I've already downloaded, and redownload only the ones I wanted, taking the risk I'd be offline when I needed to "reload".

This way I get to keep the "10 most recent unheard" setting for the my default podcasts. (I'm also going to put in a feature request for "max MB" setting, which would solve my issue completely, as 1 GG issue averages about 3 of every other podcast I've got.)

It's irritating to have to do that, so I don't know how long i'll keep up the trial but I'll stick with it a few more weeks and see.