I must admit, I had never tried to use virtual feeds until the other day. Then I tried to use them, in order to listen to a load of old episodes of a podcast that are no longer listed in that podcasts feed.
I found it to be quite difficult to do, and very unintuitive. While I do have it set up now, I did have to look up how to do it. I can't imagine a 'normal', non-techie person like my mum would have been able to figure this out.
I think it would be a good idea to overhaul the way in which you add a virtual feed.
Instead of having to select that you want to add a feed from URL (which is *not* what you're actually doing), there should be a virtual feed option on the add feed menu. I think it would also be good if you could select an existing folder to be the location of the virtual feed. There could be a little integrated folder browser screen that lets you select which folder on your SD card. The name of the folder could then be a logical name that describes the contents of the feed, instead of the cryptic name that currently appears on the list of feeds.
I agree, there are many ways to make that better and you nailed a few of them. I just recently created an issue for this...I added a reference to this post.
http://mantis.snoggdoggler.com/view.php?id=717
You might want to consider changing "Virtual feed" terminology to something more intuitive. When I first encountered the term I thought it must be something like Feedburner, had no idea it was really a local folder feed. In fact, why not call it "Folder Feed"?
Good suggestions.
It is a little silly that the Virtual Feed doesn't even read the tags in the feed files to get a name and icon for each file. You end up guessing what the files are in the feed.
Common use cases might include importing files from the user's old podcasting apps like Acast.
It might in fact be better if files automatically belonged to the podcast feed that their tags say they belong to after this import has been completed, rather than the virtual feed (or as well as the virtual feed). For example if I use Virtual Feeds to import a load of old episodes of This American Life from my old podcatcher's storage area on the SD card, I would really prefer Doggcatcher to integrate these into the Doggcatcher feed for the show rather than have them in a separate virtual feed. I suppose this should ideally be part of a complete overhaul of "duplicate feeds" - files today seem to belong to the feed they arrived in rather than a feed that they rightly "should" belong to, as one can see if one manages to create duplicate feeds.
Allowing the user to specify the import folder would be a good idea - or at the very least to copy the folder name. If you do allow the folder to be specified, you also need to decide whether Doggcatcher should take control of these files, delete them when done etc., or maybe make copies.
I'd love to be able to point a virtual feed at a specific folder; for example, I love the WTF Podcast and listen to back episodes through the app. They download to an app-defined folder. I can go into the file system and move the files to my virtual folder, or course. It would be a lot easier if I could just point Doggcatcher to the folder and listen at high-speed at my leisure. Thanks for a great product.
Yep, got that on the todo list.
http://mantis.snoggdoggler.com/view.php?id=841
I am with all of those wanting to see Virtual feeds improved. I have not been able to work out how to rename a feed, so I have several feeds called "virtual feed". I can see an option for changing the description but don't seem to be able to access it. Maybe I have something set up incorrectly somewhere which is preventing me?
Likewise I would like to able to add a folder picture. I saw some advice about adding jpg files to differnt folders. I have added under EpisodeEnclosures and PodcastImages as well as the folder with the mp3 files, but however many places I put the pictures it doesn't seem to work.
To change the name of a virtual feed, long press on the feed & select feed options,scroll down nickname field & enter the name you would like call the virtual feed , then press OK.