Playing Podcasts on an Ipod

cumquat
 January 25, 2012, 10:03 AM posted in General Discussion

I use an iPod to listen to classical music, and also to Chinese Pod podcasts.

I have organised the music into playlists - for example: the 4 movements of Beethoven's 5th, and of course I want these tracks to play consecutively without pause.

The podcasts are arranged in groupings based on language level - Newbie, Intermediate, Advanced, etc. There are a few hundred podcasts in each level, and I DON'T want them to play one after the other. I want to be able to select one podcast in a particular level, have it play through and then STOP so that I can select another one to play.

Previously I had a 2-year old iPod Nano, and this was exactly how it worked.

But I have just bought a new iPod Classic for the massive storage, and it won't do what I want. The music is fine, but the podcasts want to play consecutively without pause. I've tried looking for different settings on the iPod itself and in iTunes, but nothing stops this from happening.

Any suggestions?

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cumquat
 January 29, 2012, 08:24 AM

No Takers?

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bodawei

Hi cumquat - like the name by the way

I like Apple less than just about every person I know, and iTunes is more stupid than I am, but I am not sure I've got the full story on your complaint. Can't you just stop it yourself when the podcast is finished?

I'm impressed that you have the podcasts grouped in language levels - I would love to know how to do that.

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cumquat

Hi bodawei,

Well, there is no stop button, only pause (just like iTunes itself). How could someone design a supposedly professional piece of audio equipment without a stop button? And not stopping at exactly the right place makes a difference as to whether or not the lesson is marked as played. But of course I can get around it, it is just so annoying.

To group in language levels you just assign different album names. I Use CP-1 for Newbie, CP-2 for Elementary, etc, so they appear in level order and not alphabetical order. And of course make sure the 'Media Kind' is set to 'Podcast', and not 'music', 'video', etc. And in the preferences, you have to uncheck "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organised".

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bodawei

Thanks for the tips on using iTunes - I will give it a go.

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cumquat

I'll try again, just in case. Can anyone answer my original question?

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bababardwan

cumquat may I suggest this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2599289?start=0&tstart=0

everywhere I've read says there are no stop buttons, but that thread has suggested some workarounds. I did read somewhere that while there are no stop buttons for anything seen as a file, a stop button appears for anything that is live streaming, but I don't think that helps your problem. Good luck mate :)

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cumquat

Thanks for the research. Unfortunately there were no useful suggestions there. The suggestion about reversing/fast-forwarding through the playlist is good for short playlists. Unfortunately it is not very expedient when you are in the middle of a playlist of 300+ podcasts such as I have with the ChinesePod Intermediate playlist.

The reason I find this problem so annoying is that I don't keep a record of which lessons I have played, I just randomly play ones I haven't heard. And if I miss the end of the podcast and go slightly into the next podcast, then the next podcast is marked as played.

A further search confirmed what you said - that there is no way to stop, only pause. Which confounds me, as the podcast DID stop playing at the end on my old Nano. Perhaps someone who has a nano can tell me how their iPod handles podcasts.