Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
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Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#2That's MP3s. AAC/MP4 has better efficiency, and I can't imagine any devices in 2016 don't support it...?
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#3That's MP3s. AAC/MP4 has better efficiency, and I can't imagine any devices in 2016 don't support it...?
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#4If you want more context to this, there's a lot more in the most recent ATP podcast (with timestamp link included in the article).
Which kind of highlights a problem that I think is only going to grow over time - the general greatness of podcasts has one big black spot in that they're tough to share. I've seen so many discussions recently where there was awesome additional context or info in a recent podcast, but it was tough to share it with people in a format where they'd actually consume it. Whereas, if it had been in a blog, sharing would've been easy. Marco has the right idea with these timestamp links, but even that isn't perfect. A lot of people, especially technical people, won't even click on a non-text source, for better or worse.
It's a shame that a lot of good information is becoming harder to share due to this. It's not even that podcasts are "locked down" or behind a paywall or anything, it's just that people often don't have the time or motivation to listen to them. I don't have a great solution to this; some kind of automatic transcription maybe?
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#5If you want more context to this, there's a lot more in the most recent ATP podcast (with timestamp link included in the article). Which kind of highlights a problem that I think is only going to grow over time - the general greatness of podcasts has one big black spot in that they're tough to share. I've seen so many discussions recently where there was awesome additional context or info in a recent podcast, but it…
The solution is AAC, regarding which a number of prominent podcasters introduced FUD several years ago and now the podcasting industry is reluctant to give up MP3 -- unlike pretty much every other audio-related industry in the world. Seriously, MP3 was on its way out the year the Backstreet Boys released that song, and it surprises me that people still stick to it despite the VBR thing being a shitty problem in software that long. None of the solutions that Marco found are great, either. The solutions were dismissed decades ago in manners like this:
http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ#why_is_seeking_so_slow_while_p...
Here's an example of podcasters talking each other out of AAC:
http://podcastingguru.com/aac/
His is not the first article I've read conflating "AAC" with some kind of "Enhanced Podcast" buzzword and then dismissing it based on the flaws of "Enhanced Podcasting." I left the radio industry in 2006 and we'd already transitioned all in-house production and delivery away from MP3 then. Probably 50% of the spots we received from external shops in 2006 were MP3.
At some point you have to sit down with your listener and say that MP3 player you bought at Target in 2001 is holding us back, man. Marco is wrong on this one: it's AAC that would deliver all the good things that he wants, not VBR MP3. Fun fact: all AAC is VBR, in a manner of speaking, and it's way better than the hack that is VBR MP3s.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#6So is this why I have weird problems fast-forwarding through some NPR podcasts? I'll find myself at the end of the podcast (as indicated by the time bar), but the podcast itself is still playing.
Man, Apple really is neglecting podcasts. Reminds of an article I read recently - "Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening"
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/business/media/podcasts-su...
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#7That's not the only reason. We have been podcasting for over 10 years, and early on we tried to use VBR MP3s because we are teach people who know about that sort of thing.
As it turns out, not everyone is listening using a modern device. When we tried VBR a significant number of people could not listen because their MP3 playing hardware/software of choice did not support VBR files properly. They didn't realize this was the problem. They just complained that the file was corrupted while it was working fine for everyone else.
Also, lots of encoders, including Adobe Audition/Adobe Media Encoder, don't write the headers on VBR files properly. This also causes a lot of players to fail at playing them properly.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1072786
When you make a podcast, maximum compatibility is the priority over audio quality and file size. So standard old MP3 it is.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#8That's MP3s. AAC/MP4 has better efficiency, and I can't imagine any devices in 2016 don't support it...?
If only OGG support was more common :(
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#9That's not the only reason. We have been podcasting for over 10 years, and early on we tried to use VBR MP3s because we are teach people who know about that sort of thing. As it turns out, not everyone is listening using a modern device. When we tried VBR a significant number of people could not listen because their MP3 playing hardware/software of choice did not support VBR files properly. They didn't realize this w…
My favorite bug about this was on an _ancient_ MP3 player I had (an EigerMan F20), which supported VBR MP3s...incompletely. It didn't support decoding regions with certain bitrates, so it would just silently skip them, leading to extreme confusion on my part.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#10So is this why I have weird problems fast-forwarding through some NPR podcasts? I'll find myself at the end of the podcast (as indicated by the time bar), but the podcast itself is still playing. Man, Apple really is neglecting podcasts. Reminds of an article I read recently - "Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening" http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/business/media/podcasts-su...
It's not Apple's fault; It's MP3 in general. Seeking in VBR MP3s is hard unless you decode the whole file and make note of the offsets for timing.