Re: Podcasts, Audiobooks, and General iTunes Information [was Re: I Toones]

[VaShaun Jones]

			I tried subscribing to a podcast by using the  advance tab. It  
asked for mthe URL so I went back too Safari and copied the URLL. I  
put that in the field and went back to the songs folder under podcast  
and I saw the links. Is this the correct procedure?Sep 21, 2007, at  
12:19 PM, Esther wrote:

Hi Shaun and others,
On Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 05:22PM, "VaShaun Jones"  wrote:
Can someone explain how to navigate in I Toones for things like  
books and podcast?
I have the source interaction down, but I don't know what to do  
once I get to podcast
or audio books. Can someone help?

First of all, items that show up in the podcast and audiobooks  
sections
of your iTunes Library have very specific meaning in iTunes:

(1) audiobooks
In general, only audiobooks purchased from Audible.com or from the
iTunes Store will show up in this library. Both types of files support
DRM (Digital Rights Management), so you need to supply a login name
and password the first time you purchase them, or to designate that
iTunes on another computer is allowed to play them. When you play
these files iTunes (and iPods) will remember your last played location
and resume playing there (called "bookmarking").  You can also
navigate (by "chapter markers") within these files with special  
keyboard
shortcuts in iTunes.

(2) podcasts
Podcasts that you download or subscribe to through iTunes will appear
in folders for each podcast series in your podcast library. You can
subscribe to podcasts either by finding them in the iTunes Store, or
by adding the URL of the podcast feed under the "Subscribe to Podcast"
option in the drop-down menu under the Advanced menu in the iTunes
toolbar.  (VO-keys+m to get to the menu toolbar, right arrow over to
Advanced, down arrow to the "Subscribe to Podcast" option; carriage
return and paste or type in the podcast's RSS feed).  Or, select
the iTunes Store in the Sources Outline, tab to the "Search Text  
Field",
type in the podcast name (for example, "Screenless Switchers") and
carriage return, tab to the "Songs Outline" and start interacting
(VO-keys+shift+down arrow), right arrow to the price column (you'll  
hear
"Free"; VO-keys+shift+c gives you the column name, "Price"), then  
click with
your mouse to subscribe.  (I have my VoiceOver navigation options set
to "Mouse Cursor Tracks VoiceOver Cursor"; so VO-keys+shift+space bar
works for me. Others just click or control click.)

Depending on how your iTunes preferences are set, you'll probably just
download the latest episode (unless you set up your subscription
preferences to download all available episodes from the feed before
you subscribed), and iTunes will check the feed once a day for new
podcasts (unless you've changed this to "weekly", "hourly", etc.)

To find these podcasts in your own library by tab over to the Sources
Outline and choose podcasts, then tab to the Songs Outline, interact,
and find the new entry. You can open or close folders with
VO-keys+backslash (where backslash is the key below the delete key
at theright end of the keyboard), to see the individual episodes.  
Carriage
return to start playing your selected podcast.

Other features of iTunes podcasts:
(a) They bookmark and are excluded from options like "Party  
Shuffle" where
iTunes can be set to play random or semi-random iTunes selections from
your music library. (Audiobooks are also excluded from Party  
Shuffle). If you
don't want this behavior you have to change it.

This is described here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg14143.html

(b) There's a description field that can be really useful in deciding
what you want to listen to or download.  For example, if you've
just subscribed to Darcy and Holly's Screenless Switchers podcast, and
are looking through the expanded podcast folder, you can arrow down
through the description column to find the March episode where they
did a review of iTunes, even if it isn't downloaded.  Then you can
bring up the contextual menu (VO-keys+shift+m) and select "Download
Podcast Episode" to get it. (If you choose "Download Podcast Episode"
from the folder level, you'll get all episodes currently in the feed).
These descriptions are only present when podcast providers supply  
them,
although most podcasts at the iTunes Store have them.  ACB Main Menu's
podcast doesn't have any descriptions, for example.


(3) Navigating

Navigation in all these libraries is similar. Use tab to move between
the Sources Outline, Search Text Field, and Songs Outline (or press
shift+tab to move in the reverse direction).  Choose between  
libraries,
the iTunes Store, or playlists in the Sources Outline by using your up
and down arrow keys, or by typing the first few letters of the name of
the location or playlist you want to navigate to.  Or, you can  
bring up
the item chooser menu (VO-keys+i) to navigate the Sources Outline.

Once you have chosen a location or playlist in the Sources Outline,
tab over to the Songs Outline and start interacting to go to  
individual
items.  (Note: the name "Songs Outline" is a general term for the  
place
you find individual items in your Source selection, and reflects  
iTunes'
origin as a music library.  The "songs" can be radio streams,  
audiobooks,
podcasts, movies, or tv shows.)  The information in the Songs Outline
is organized in columns, and you can change the default information  
that's
shown with the View options menu (command+j). Typing in the "Search  
Text
Field" will limit what shows up in the Songs Outline to items with  
entries that
match your search string. Or, you can toggle the browser on or off
(command+b) and browse that library via the Genre, Artist, and  
Album tags
for your tracks (or combinations of these).

For more details on the browser see:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg12923.html

Lou Grosso pointed out that
the Songs Outline behaves just like finder, so you can find out the  
name in
the column heading with VO-keys+shift+c and sort on viewed columns  
with
VO-keys+shift+backslash.  A second VO-keys+shift+backslash reverses  
the
order.  So if you want to reverse the order of podcast episodes, go  
to the
Release Date column and issue the sort commamd VO-keys+shift 
+backslash.
This is an easy way to create playlists ordered by Artist, Album,  
or Song Name;
get the selections ordered as you want in the Songs Outline with
the sort options, select everything with command-a, and then use the
"New Playlist from Selection" option under the File menu (or just  
use the
keyboard shortcut shift+command+n) to create a playlist.

Incidentally, you don't have to make playlists to play tracks.  In  
the music
library or audiobooks library, once you start playing a track in
your Songs Outline, iTunes will continue to play subsequent tracks  
that
are in the Songs Outline. But it may be convenient to create a  
playlist
and start and stop playing from the playlist in the Sources Outline
(carriage return to start, space bar to pause, space bar again to
resume).  If you reorder the tracks in your playlist in the Songs  
Outline,
say by sorting by Artist, and want that change reflected in the  
playlist
playing order, tab back to that playlist in the Sources Outline,  
interact,
then bring up the contextual menu (VO-keys+shift+m) and select
"Copy to Play Order" and the new play order as displayed in the
Songs Outline will take effect in the playlist.  Otherwise, songs in
the playlist will play in the order they were added.  You can create a
new playlist which is blank ("New Playlist" under the File menu, or  
use
the command-n keyboard shortcut) and add tracks individually or in  
blocks.
Under the Songs Outline just use the contextual menu (VO-keys+shift 
+m),
choose "Add to Playlist" and right-arrow to select the playlist you
want to add to.  So if I want to add the 5 podcast episodes from
my library to a playlist, I could select the podcast library in
the Sources Outline, tab to the Songs Outline, interact and use the
arrow keys to go to the first selection, hold down the shift key and
arrow down 4 more episodes (while VoiceOver tells me the rows that
I'm on), then use VO-keys+shift+m and use "Add to Playlist".

Two other functions playlists are used for: burning CDs or DVDs (which
must be done from a playlist) and playing a series of podcasts  
(probably
movies, tv shows, and videos, too) in sequence without stopping.
Otherwise, if you think about it, the next item in your podcast (or  
movie
or tv) library is likely to be totally unrelated -- maybe even a
different topic altogether, especially since the folder organization
means that it could be in a different folder.

A lot of material on iTunes has already been discussed, so please  
guys,
get familiar with how to search the Mail Archives for this information
in the period starting March 2007.  For example, see

http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg18135.html

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Esther