Suggestions for improving chapters and one suggestion for transcripts
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First of all I just want to say thanks for implementing the handling of podcasting 2.0 chapters, it really helps improve my experience with Pockets Casts. That said I have some suggestions on how they can be improved:
- Podcasting 2.0 podcasts can have chapters that are timestamps where donations from users happened. For instance the podcast “Podcasting 2.0” has these in pretty much every episode. In the app Podverse, these chapters don’t show up as they aren’t useful for listeners. Here’s the latest episode of “Podcasting 2.0” in Podverse: https://podverse.fm/episode/WIhuxuJKh. You can see donation chapters don’t show up but they do in Pocket Casts. I suggest excluding these from Pockets Casts as well. Besides cluttering the chapters they can also be dynamically added which screws up Pocket Casts “Preselect Chapters” feature. If I exclude a bunch of chapters and then more donations chapters are added after that, the chapters I excluded will be different because Pocket Casts doesn’t account for that. Looks like an indexing error.
- The “Preselect chapters” and “Done” buttons should be sticky in the chapter view and stuck to the top as you scroll so you don’t have to always scroll all the way to the top to press them for podcast episodes with a lot of chapters.
- It would be useful if in the chapters view you could see the timestamp that the chapters start at.
- If I’m looking at a podcast and I click an episode without playing it, it would be nice if I could see the “Chapters” tab to see if that episode has chapters. Right now only the “Details” and “Bookmarks” tabs are visible in that case.
- If I exclude chapters from an episode I think that the scrubber in the player should take that into account. What I mean by that is if I have an hour long podcast and I excluded 40 minutes of it, the scrubber should only show 20 minutes instead of the full hour. This would make it easier to know how much of the episode I actually have left to listen to.
- Nice to have: a thumbnail of the chapter artwork in the “Chapters” tab if it exists for that chapter.
- Unrelated to chapters but still would be nice to have: podcast episodes with transcripts should sync the transcript position to the correct position currently playing in the episode. Podverse does this (they call it “auto-scroll”) so it is possible.
That’s all of my suggestions. Keep up the great work!
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@pocketcastaway – great suggestions!
We appreciate you taking the time sharing this with us. I have added these ideas to our board for consideration :)
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You are very welcome! Please let us know if you have any more suggestions or questions concerning the app. We appreciate your support.
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Hey
@pocketcastaway – killer suggestions! I’m the dude behind Audioscrape.com, always geeking out over podcast stuff, and your ideas hit home. Here’s what I think:
- Donation Chapters: Those donation timestamps in Podcasting 2.0 are a mess. We filter them out at Audioscrape by default to cut the clutter. Pocket Casts should too – fixes that “Preselect Chapters” glitch when new ones sneak in.
- Sticky Buttons: Scrolling up for “Done” on long lists is annoying. Our dashboard’s got sticky controls – super handy. Copy that trick!
- Timestamps: Showing when chapters kick off would be sweet. I use that in Audioscrape to jump right to the good stuff.
- Chapters Pre-Play: Seeing chapters before playing? Total win. We do it for previews – helps me pick what’s worth hearing.
- Scrubber Fix: A scrubber that skips excluded parts is smart. Might steal that for our tool – shows what’s actually left.
- Thumbnails: Little chapter artwork previews would rock. We’ve got icons on transcripts – same vibe.
- Transcript Sync: Auto-scrolling transcripts like Podverse? Yes please. We’ve got it in Audioscrape – perfect for keeping up.
Your ideas nail what I need as a pro – less junk, more focus.
@staff-joey8@mikerockwell, I’m +1’ing this whole list, especially the scrubber and sync. Pocket Casts is already dope, but this could make it even better. (Big fan here – I juggle it with my own app!)
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