Bug: Downloaded video podcast episodes are not playable (reported as corrupted)

  • Unknown's avatar
    defagos · Member ·

    Hi,

    We have users reporting that downloaded episodes from our RSS video podcast feeds (e.g. https://www.rts.ch/emissions/36-9/podcasts/?format=rss/podcast) don’t play on iOS. Pocket Casts reports the video files as being corrupted.

    We checked and can indeed confirm this behavior (Pocket Casts 7.7.1, iOS 17.6.1 in our setup):

    I had a look at our video files and verified they are actually playable, also on iOS devices. So the problem is somewhere else, likely in Pocket Casts itself.

    Problem

    I suspect that Pocket Casts is not assigning a correct file extension when saving downloaded files locally (or no extension at all). For AVPlayer, which is likely used by Pocket Casts under the hood, having a correct extension assigned to local files is crucial. If the extension is missing or inconsistent (e.g. if a video is assigned an mp3 extension), playback namely fails.

    Possible solution

    Pocket Casts should likely rely on MIME types to always assign a proper extension to downloaded files (e.g. mp4 if the MIME type is video/mp4), so that the player can always play them locally.

    Thanks in advance for your help. I remain available should you need more information.

    Best regards.

  • staff-cara · Staff ·

    Hi, @defagos! We’re currently investigating this issue for you, and we’ll let you know as soon as we know more.

  • staff-cara · Staff ·

    @defagos We’ve found that the issue is from the podcast episode files returning a different content type. Specifically, while the files are being downloaded as MP4s, the content type being returned from your server is actually binary/octet-stream, so there is a mismatch.

    Ideally, your hosting provider should fix this issue. However, we are also looking at how we might be able to work around such mismatches. You can track our progress here: https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios/issues/1933

  • Unknown's avatar
    defagos · Member ·

    Hi!

    Thank you very much for having investigated this issue on your end.

    I appreciate your workaround proposal and I will report the content type issue internally as well. Feel free not to introduce any ugly workaround you would not be comfortable with, as the issue is really on our end.

    Thanks again for your help.

    Best regards.

  • staff-frank · Staff ·

    Hi @defagos!

    It sounds like you’re all set so I’ll close this topic. Thanks!

  • staff-cara · Staff ·

    I appreciate your workaround proposal and I will report the content type issue internally as well. Feel free not to introduce any ugly workaround you would not be comfortable with, as the issue is really on our end.

    @defagos That is very kind! I appreciate that a lot. Our developers did find a workaround, however, and it should be available with version 7.73 of the app  😄

  • The topic ‘Bug: Downloaded video podcast episodes are not playable (reported as corrupted)’ is closed to new replies.