Podbird reignited

danqo6

Interesting that it is an optional setting.

Because I am not sure how reliable it is

I , too, wonder how it works, and would a crash of Podbird still be able to catch the position before it closes? Will continue testing.

No, during crash it shouldn't work, it catches event onDestruction and during crash it is not trigerred.

@CiberSheep I will test more

danqo6

@CiberSheep Thanks for extensive testing, I can reproduce it too.

theare27

@danqo6 sounds fab - will install, test and provide feedback

joe

I have an issue like this:
Downloading episode and playing doesn't seem to know that it is downloaded.

Close the app
Turn off wifi
Open and try to play and nothing happens.
Turn on wifi
Sometimes plays, or sometimes renders the episode completely unplayable

It's more of an issue of Podbird not knowing that the episode can be played offline.
Seems to be the case with the new setting on or off.

theare27

Queue retention and retention of active track within queue seems much improved in this new build.

Remembering of play position within the track however doesn't seem to work for me. I've toggled the setting on, and it shows green, but doesn't seem to help

This may not be a Podbird problem per-say, more it's interactions with Media-Hub but even in the new build, tracks after the first one are not controllable from the Sound dropdown

Disconnect of heaphones does not stop playback on the second track the way it does with the originally played one

Again a Media-Hub / Podbird interaction thing I suspect.

danqo6

I can confirm that media-hub is a bit broken, not all qtmultimedia features are implemented and correctly working. Restoring playback position is buggy now, will dig deeper tomorow.

theare27

@danqo6 The same thing does not happen with the Music App, that seems to talk to Medi-hub fine. Is that because it's more integrated into the OS as a stock app? Any code there that might be helpful in debugging Podbird / Media-hub intergeneration?

danqo6

Hello guys again,
I have for you another version for testing. Restoring position should be more reliable now, I changed behavior of seeking slider and added to episode details position were you stopped listening certain episode.
Download armhf and arm64 build.

@CiberSheep Your issue should be fixed

@joe said in Podbird reignited:

Sometimes plays, or sometimes renders the episode completely unplayable

@joe Please test if this issue still persist

@theare27 said in Podbird reignited:

Any code there that might be helpful in debugging Podbird / Media-hub intergeneration?

Thanks, that idea helped me quite a bit, music app has a lot of workarounds

CiberSheep

@danqo6 said in Podbird reignited:

I have for you another version for testing. [...]

@CiberSheep Your issue should be fixed

I'm about to cry... it renders even the position of older downloaded episodes that I previously partially listened. Position recovery is working on downloaded and online episodes woohooo!

Seeking in an episode is really smooth

Thanks!

joe

@danqo6 said in Podbird reignited:

Hello guys again,
I have for you another version for testing. Restoring position should be more reliable now, I changed behavior of seeking slider and added to episode details position were you stopped listening certain episode.
Download armhf and arm64 build.

@CiberSheep Your issue should be fixed

@joe said in Podbird reignited:

Sometimes plays, or sometimes renders the episode completely unplayable

@joe Please test if this issue still persist

Awesome it seems to be working. At first the position wasn't being remembered but I turned it off and on again, and that seemed to make it work post download. Works offline. Thank you!

I will continue testing to be sure.

theare27

@danqo6 vastly better in terms of media hub integration and playback position retention

Incredible progress made, many thanks for all your work, it's really getting there now

malditobastardo

@danqo6 fantastic work! thanks a lot! does this new version was already uploaded to the OpenStore?

theare27

@malditobastardo don't think so - but links to the packages are above

danqo6

@malditobastardo not yet, just made merge request.

Thanks for awesome feedback and testing to you all!

Elleo

Just released version 0.8.9 to the Open Store with @danqo6's latest changes, thanks very much!

TartanSpartan

I would like to spitball a feature request. Last time I tried to put paid podcasts onto my UT device, I had two options: either send them from my laptop via USB or the like, or, use Firefox within Libertine to open the site where they were downloaded from (because last I checked Morph Browser wasn't capable of logging into the site in question, or rendering it, I forget which) to download them to the SD card. The site in question is Podbean, but there are other platforms which allow for premium subscriptions I think. A third option would be to run the Podbean .apk within Anbox and hack-sync the downloads from the Anbox filesystem to the UT filesystem, but ehh, I don't want such a crude brute force method. In any event, these three options would require the podcasts to be played in the Music app, but as the apps stand now, I prefer playing podcasts in Podbird to Music.

So, could we find a way to input credentials into Podbird and have it access specific archives of premium podcasts depending on which ones you are subscribed to? I believe Podbird syncs it's free podcasts according to the iTunes database, so can we implement this for other podcast databases which are password protected?

AppLee

Hi, @tartanspartan

For feature request you should go to:
https://launchpad.net/podbird
Create a bug and tag it as part of the "wishlist"

And it seems to me your request is more general and is worth a dedicated thread in the general category maybe.

I think this is not simple at all and might require heavy rework of the system.
Or maybe I'm wrong and the account management feature can be used.

PhoenixLandPirat

Hey guys, Podbird hasn't been updated to the latest QT that Ubuntu Touch is now based on, would upgrading the qt version that podbird uses, make the app more responsive? I notice that it's really bad on the PinePhone, but even on the OP3, the app isn't as responsive as the likes of telegram or Fluffychat?

I know there was a fix for telegram which helped most with the pinephone, but also made it work better across all devices, I wonder if Podbird suffers from a similar problem.
https://gitlab.com/ubports/apps/teleports/-/merge_requests/399

PhoenixLandPirat

@phoenixlandpirat So the answer is yes.
I found 2 files with running: true
I used grep -r running, and changed true to root.visible
app/podbird.qml: running: root.visible
app/ui/SearchPage.qml: running: root.visible

If anyone can change those and get it out to the openstore then the app will run much nicer especially on the pinephone.

Still huge lag when you pull to refresh, however I think the biggest issue with usability is fixed by changing those two bits of text from true to root.visible

danqo6

Hello guys, recently I was playing a bit with podbird, investigating long refresh times. So I made some changes, that should noticeably improve refreshing times, and maybe fix unability to refresh some podcasts.
There is changed logic, that it checks episodes only added after last refresh.
But if you open some podcast from podcast list and than pull to refresh, it would refresh all episodes from that podcast.
download link
If refresh time is still too long, please report database size stored in ~/.local/share/com.mikeasoft.podbird/Databases
My database has around 15MB and I have around 80 podcasts added, but speed is reasonably good.
It contains fixes for pinephone from @phoenixlandpirat too.