Podcast track numbering
ok4rm
August 18, 2011, 09:32 AM posted in General DiscussionHello, I found strange errors in podcast mp3 files. First of all, there are some podcasts, at least in 请问 section, which do not have track numbers. This makes track selection a random operation, at least in my android phone and some MP3 other devices at home. Many of these files have Jenny's portrait as the embedded image (the big face detail over the whole picture). At least I guess she is Jenny :)
Second, those other MP3's have wrong track number except tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and all tracks containing digits 8 or 9. This is probably because some software takes the lesson name, e.g. chinesepod0010pb.mp3, interprets the number within the name and writes it into so called ID3 tag. BUT - it must be some Linux or Unix software, because the track number 0010 is interpreted as octal number because the standard Unix/Linux library does so always when the first digit is 0. However, if the number contains any non-octal digit (i.e. 8, 9), the number is silently interpreted as decimal number, anyway. Therefore lesson 0030 gets track number 24 (3 times 8), but lesson 0029 gets correct track number 29.
So, if somebody had capacity to fix it... it would be nice. It's not a big problem, though.
johnb
August 20, 2011, 10:09 PMok4rm, thanks for the comment. That's an interesting issue, and one that we haven't seen before. It's likely an issue with the publishing system, and so we'll have to dig into the code there to figure out what's going on. It's almost certainly possible to fix it for new lessons going forward, but fixing the ID3 tags for all of the old lessons would require regenerating thousands of lessons worth of MP3s, so that might take some time (likely it will happen naturally as old lessons are edited and republished from time to time).
jennyzhu
August 20, 2011, 04:16 PMWow, you are a math wiz! I forwarded your post to John B, CPod's product manager. BTW, the woman's picture is stock photo. Much more glamorous than me.