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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

#81

Post by okket »

TD-Linux wrote: post #50
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all problems with a specific, objectively crappy container, as you've noted. There are many alternative containers and no reason the podcasting community couldn't come up with its own, such as by extending Matroska. This obviously creates separate problems, but I'd like to see the podcasting community start to shape its own destiny a bit rather than expect others to innovate for them or kludge older formats…

One of the OP's requirements is that this work in iTunes, which precludes making a new container format. I also think existing containers would meet the requirements - for example, Ogg meets the requirement of both being storable and easily streamable. Also, the Matroska spec is being updated to a new version, and being standardized in the IETF CELLAR working group. I'd highly suggest participating if you'd like to h…

Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime transmission (cellar) documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cellar/documents/

Matroska draft: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lhomme-cellar-matrosk...

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#82

Post by xuki »

ghshephard wrote: post #80
archagon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm sure lots of people listen to it all the way through. I did for a while myself. But it's not worth inconveniencing so many of your listeners just to make your theme song (or very occasional clips) sound a tiny bit better — especially considering the fact that most people listen to podcasts in their car or even through the iPhone speaker, as Marco himself discovered from his analytics. Others have already no…

"a 1.3x size increase is really not that big of a big deal" - you say this about Marco "All my image resources are vectors so the OverCast App is 5 Megabytes large" Arment? For the same reason that UTF-8 is awesome, VBR podcasts are likewise a perfect system, presuming we can get over the chapter marking hurdles.

Not vector, but drawn by code.

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#83

Post by jccalhoun »

MBCook wrote: post #63
mwfunk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is a little misleading- it's actually about podcasters who want them to embrace/extend podcasting itself so that they (the podcasters, not the company) could better monetize podcasts. I can't imagine that the ways in which this might be done (DRM/subscriptions/user tracking/etc.) would appeal to HN readers, even if it would help the most popular podcasters make more money. IMO, benign neglect is the best…

What are you talking about? Marco's been trying to avoid that, as opposed to what the Stitchers of the world are doing.

"That article" refers to the NYTimes article linked in the previous post not Marco's article. I was confused at first too.

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#84

Post by danseely »

archagon wrote: post #38
scarface74 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonsense? He explicitly said in the episode that he studied some options and they were all bad ideas. He made a few million from the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo, has FU money in the bank and he is just scratching an itch and exploring his hobby. I don't see anything wrong with that.

The nonsense is that this is a solution looking for a problem. It's scratching an itch by trying to move a mountain. I am certain that nobody in the history of the podcast has ever complained about the sound quality of the theme song or audio clips, especially after they switched over to 96kbps. Whereas there is no doubt that any technical solution — especially any of the ones proposed, including switching to VBR — w…

>I am certain that nobody in the history of the podcast has ever complained about the sound quality of the theme song or audio clips, especially after they switched over to 96kbps.

Source?

>Whereas there is no doubt that any technical solution — especially any of the ones proposed, including switching to VBR — would inconvenience a whole lot of people.

It sounded to me like the entire point of his approach is to find a technical solution without inconveniencing people.

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#85

Post by mixedCase »

aianus wrote: post #26
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VBR have been the red-headed step-child of MP3 since the beginning. I have no idea why, maybe it was difficult to write good encoders and decoders for it for back in the day. The few times I used them, I found trivial space savings compared to a CBR and to be honest I thought I could hear a difference (maybe its not humanly possible if the implementation of the encoder/decoder is good but what if the implementation i…

iPhone storage and cellular bandwidth are still extremely expensive. Over $100 for a measly 16gb of storage or 4gb of LTE.

>iPhone storage and cellular bandwidth are still extremely expensive. Over $100 for a measly 16gb of storage or 4gb of LTE.

...is "don't use an iPhone until they start adding microSDs to their phones and don't stream" too obvious or am I missing something here?

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#86

Post by superdaniel »

thecosas wrote: post #46
derefr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "radio stuff" isn't nearly as much of an irritant if you're listening to a podcast while commuting. It's still kind of grating when you listen to a whole bunch of episodes of something in a row, though. There needs to be markers in the files and software that can cut off the intro/ending of the "internal" episodes in a playlist. Like a much more drastic version of gapless playback.

Chapter markers are a potential solution IF podcast producers use them and mark them accurately and IF your podcast player of choice supports Chapter markers.

Overcast[0], the iOS app that Marco makes supports chapters and he usually adds them when he encodes his podcast and it's pretty nice. Hopefully he releases his personal podcast production tool soon so that it can be more widely used.

[0] https://appsto.re/us/jhe90.i

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#87

Post by ghshephard »

xuki wrote: post #82
ghshephard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a 1.3x size increase is really not that big of a big deal" - you say this about Marco "All my image resources are vectors so the OverCast App is 5 Megabytes large" Arment? For the same reason that UTF-8 is awesome, VBR podcasts are likewise a perfect system, presuming we can get over the chapter marking hurdles.

Not vector, but drawn by code.

I've always divided 2D graphics of the kind you see in Apps (let's ignore 3D Graphics cards with shaders/textures/etc.. for a bit) into two categories - bitmap and vector graphics. Bitmap is pretty straighforward, and vector graphics (googling for a second) is "...the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygons" - which presumably Marco is doing to keep his app size so small?

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#88

Post by Thlom »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #67
raverbashing wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like podcasts, but they're unnerving to me. It's too much time wasted to get to the point. And as opposed to music, I can't program properly when listening to them Not to mention a lot of podcasters act in a radio way (which make sense for radio), with repetitions, talking slowly, endless introductions, chit chat, etc

Some are better than others in those regards. Most of the ones I listen to, I listen to for entertainment - so I don't mind some meandering. And decent podcast apps will give you reasonable skip options - I will frequently skip intros and outros (I'm looking at you, 99% invisible; I have never cared what your boy has to say.)

Yeah, but it's the intro and outro that makes the money.

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#89

Post by pavel_lishin »

Thlom wrote: post #88
pavel_lishin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some are better than others in those regards. Most of the ones I listen to, I listen to for entertainment - so I don't mind some meandering. And decent podcast apps will give you reasonable skip options - I will frequently skip intros and outros (I'm looking at you, 99% invisible; I have never cared what your boy has to say.)

Yeah, but it's the intro and outro that makes the money.

Not always. I've stopped listening to Marc Maron's podcast because the last one I listened to started off with a 20 minute monologue about his cat. 99% Invisible used to always end the podcast with a quote from his kid about something; maybe it still does, but once the "main show" is over, I just skip to the end and mark it as read.

Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them

#90

Post by dzhiurgis »

raverbashing wrote: post #11
Analemma_ wrote: post #4

If 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…

I like podcasts, but they're unnerving to me. It's too much time wasted to get to the point. And as opposed to music, I can't program properly when listening to them Not to mention a lot of podcasters act in a radio way (which make sense for radio), with repetitions, talking slowly, endless introductions, chit chat, etc

I do agree there is too much noise, but in the end of the day they are not the pure way to learn, though on the higher end of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_entertainment
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