Granular Playlist Control
I am not sure if this has been requested (I would imagine it has), but I would love the ability to have more granular control over the playlists. Currently I primarily use audio playlists. I can sort by date but only by decending order. I also can't actually move a podcast up or down in the list like I can on the main screen.
So I propose:
1) let me change how the list is sorted (I checked preferences and found nothing, I also hit the button a few times in the audio playlist area and it did not change the sort).
2) let me change the order in which podcasts are played.
3) let me mix audio and video podcasts.
I apologize if I am duplicating efforts on requests, but I am new to the app and looked at the first few pages of the forums and didn't see anything matching this.
thanks for your time and effort.
TrashK
I agree, the fact that doggcatcher doesnt allow the user to manually change the playlist order is a massive oversight.
We need the ability to be able manually change the order as sorting by date isnt adequate enough.
Maybe a long click and drag to move a podcast up or down in the order?
thanks
Wes
Sorting - Changing the order of the feeds on the main feeds screen will affect the order that the items play in the audio playlist. The playlist button really changes the 'grouping' rather than the sorting, but the overall order is determined by the order of the feeds. I just updated the description of the popup to explain this better.
Manual playlist ordering - I do have an issue for this and have gotten quite a few requests for it.
Mixing playlist - The next step for me here is to allow an autoplay for video so that there is consistent behavior between audio and video, then what you are describing would be possible. How would you intend to use this, would you want to have video/audio intermixed in order and the items to auto-play?
Most podcast listeners will have a few podcasts "in stock" that they won't listen to immediately or may not listen to at all. Some quite long shows are on daily for example, and only select episodes will get listened to.
The Doggcatcher system is quite good - I always see my fave shows first - but it falls over with this case. Manual sorting of the playlist to override the default sequence with drag and drop would be the way to go here. There is obviously a question of how to handle updates after this. Should something dragged to the top remain at the top as updates arrive?
Here's how I think it should be solved. The main use case is where users want to drag several items to the top and, once at the top, sort them somewhat by dragging. You could handle this by marking any item dragged to the top as being persistently at the head of the list. Items so positioned might also be shown in a different colour, and a dragged item could glow when you try dragging it to the head of the list. This persistence of position should also "infect" any item dragged adjacent to a persistent item. You will end up with a block of n coloured items which remain at the head of the list through updates (until the items are listened to).
A reverse chronological playlist would also be useful. This used to be a staple with smart playlists of podcasts on the iPhone (until Apple broke it).
I'm going to be adding the ability to put feeds in categories/tags and then we'll have a playlist for each of the categories. This will let you quickly flip from your normal stuff and your stock stuff.
I also plan on adding a playlist where you manually add and order them items the way you want.
I don't think it's going to work to have any automatic playlists that you can manipulate by adding/removing/re-ordering because it's going to be pretty tricky to be automatically calculating the playlist as the feeds/items change and add the same time, keep your changes intact.
I think we can do the majority of what you're looking for with just the categories and a playlist for them.
Thanks for the feedback.
This sounds perfect. Sortable playlists is the one feature I've been missing since switching to Android.
RE: "I also plan on adding a playlist where you manually add and order them items the way you want."
I have been patiently awaiting this for a long time, and was excited a month or so ago when I saw in the road-map that it was slated for "release after next". I just checked today (after a couple of releases have occurred), expecting it to be on deck next, and see that it is now slated TWO releases after next. Extremely disappointing.
Yep, those releases are not anything that is guaranteed. It's just kind of a rough target schedule that I work from and it changed quite a bit. I'm working on feed categories now (will be in the next release) and these are influencing the playlists a bit so I need to get that into the market release and get it stable before I mess with the playlists more.
That's been a pretty common request so it will get done. I'm just making the schedule mostly off of user requests and dependencies.
Request: Please perfect human cloning so that we can two awesome Eric's, one who can work on granular playlist control :-)
Thank you Eric for working so hard on DoggCatcher. We need two of you! I am looking forward to granular playlist control. That is the one thing I miss from when I used to use iTunes for podcasts, and later with Blackberry PodTrapper. But I know you will make it happen! ;-) Thanks, -Sami/Samantha.
Thanks for the kind words. Having a spare would be nice :-)
Hey Eric. Thanks for the hard work - I'm really enjoying DoggCatcher. I was wondering about the status of an easily sortable playlist. I'm hoping for a playlist that contains all new or in-progress podcasts (like the current playlists) but where I can drag-and-drop the order of individual episodes. This would be more like the functionality of a playlist in the default Android music player. Unless I'm missing something, This is slightly different than the hold-to-select option of generating a new playlist that currently exists.
Thanks!
-Rebecca
You're welcome, it is great to hear that it is doing what you need. I really enjoy working on it, so it's good for both of us :-)
Well one thing that I don't know if we'll be able to do is a playlist that is both managed (created and changed) by DC and also managed by the user. That would be a pretty tough feat to pull off.
What might work is a user playlist that always had new episodes added to it. This way you wouldn't have to add episodes to the playlist but you would still have to put them in the order you want. When a feed updates, we could just stick the new episodes at the end.
What might work is a user playlist that always had new episodes added to it. This way you wouldn't have to add episodes to the playlist but you would still have to put them in the order you want. When a feed updates, we could just stick the new episodes at the end.
That's exactly what I'm thinking. I don't care what order the new podcasts are added, so slapping 'em on at the end would be perfect. I'd simply love a way to drag-and-drop reorder them in an always up-to-date playlist where new podcasts are added and finished ones removed automatically.
That said, this isn't a make-or-break kind of thing. I'm already using and enjoying DoggCatcher, but this is the one thing I miss about manually importing playlists from my PC and using the Android music player: the ability to draft-and-drop to resort the playlist once it has been created.
Ok, that sounds good. I created an issue for this - http://mantis.snoggdoggler.com/view.php?id=1186
I think that might be useful to a lot of people.