erratix

Level 1 (13 points)

iTunes

Q: Could it be that iTunes 12.3.3.17 has problems dealing with HTTP/1.1 redirects (302) for podcasts?

Ever since upgrading to iTunes 12.3.3.7 (and El Capitan), all my podcasts from a particular site no longer download.

I have many other podcasts (from other sources) which have no download issues at all.

The little download cloud appears at the right in my list, and when I click on it I get the "!" on the left of the podcast, which tells me:

I tried accessing the podcast from another device (PC) and the podcast is all fine.

Reinstalled iTunes, recreated the iTunes .xml file, no change.

Unsubscribe, delete, resubscribe. Tried many things. Nothing helps.

Then I decided to launch Wireshark to see what was happening, and came to the conclusion iTunes seems to have a problem with a redirect it gets from the website.

The HTTP/1.1 request from iTunes asks to GET http://rf.proxycast.org/1153838588270485504/16256-18.04.2016-ITEMA_20963865-0.mp 3

which is an empty page

The server responds with a 302 redirect to http://media.radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/16256-18.04.2016-ITEMA_20963865-0 .mp3

which it the podcast indeed.

So my guess is that iTunes has trouble dealing with this redirect. Unless it is something else, but I don't know what.

Any ideas?

The full conversation is here:

GET /1153838588270485504/16256-18.04.2016-ITEMA_20963865-0.mp3 HTTP/1.1

Host: rf.proxycast.org

Accept: */*

User-Agent: iTunes/12.3.3 (Macintosh; OS X 10.11.4) AppleWebKit/601.5.17.1

Connection: close

Cache-Control: no-cache

HTTP/1.1 302 Found

Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 19:41:03 GMT

Server: Apache

Set-Cookie: e=VxkszwqAhy0AAB3ncdEAAAID; path=/; expires=Tue, 16-May-17 19:41:03 GMT; domain=.proxycast.org

p3p: policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml",CP="NON DSP COR CURa PSA PSD OUR BUS NAV STA"

Location: http://media.radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/16256-18.04.2016-ITEMA_20963865-0 .mp3

Connection: close

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Posted on Apr 21, 2016 1:27 PM

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Q: Could it be that iTunes 12.3.3.17 has problems dealing with HTTP/1.1 redirects (302) for podcasts?

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by erratix,

erratix Sep 3, 2016 4:42 AM in response to erratix
Level 1 (13 points)

iTunes

Sep 3, 2016 4:42 AM in response to erratix

Does anyone have any idea as to where to look for this problem ?
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by Roger Wilmut1,Helpful

Roger Wilmut1 Sep 3, 2016 9:11 AM in response to erratix
Level 9 (77,886 points)

iTunes

Sep 3, 2016 9:11 AM in response to erratix

The feed in question is http://radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/rss_16256.xml . I had no difficulty with these episodes when subscribing in iTunes 12.4.3.1 on Mavericks. The episodes also play OK in the iTunes Store.

These redirects have been known to cause problems sometimes, but as I'm having no difficulty then you could try upgrading to the latest iTunes; it may be that El Capitan is part of the problem. If upgrading iTunes doesn't solve your problem, getting someone who has El Capitan to try it would help to isolate the issue.

In the meantime you could try setting Safari or FireFox as your default RSS reader, opening the feed in it, then control clicking on the URL for the 'media file' in each episode and choosing 'Copy link location' or equivalent and entering that in your browser - the redirect may work there. Or as you have a means of determining the final URL, just enter that in a browser to play the file.
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by erratix,

erratix Sep 3, 2016 8:59 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1
Level 1 (13 points)

iTunes

Sep 3, 2016 8:59 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Yes, that is the feed in question, Thank you - i forgot to put it in my question.
Nothing has changed for me by going to iTunes 12.4.3.1 a while ago.

Good to know everything seems to work fine for you, which probably confirms there has to be an issue un my side.

Can anyone who's reading this and who's running on El Capitan 10.11.4 or .5 or .6 also try?
That would help me rule out it's something to do with El Capitan.

Weird, when I subscribe to the feed via my usual reader (NetVibes) or via FireFox, both give as media file the URL to the "old" location (proxycast.org) and when I click on it I do not get redirected to the new location.

I wonder if there could not be something wrong in the feed .xml
I know next to nothing about xml, but when I look at one item :

<item>
<title>Quelle place pour le naturalisme dans le monde d'aujourd'hui ?</title>
<link>http://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/continent-sciences/quelle-place-pour-le-na turalisme-dans-le-monde-d-aujourd-hui</link>
<description>durée : 00:59:04 - CONTINENT SCIENCES - par : Stéphane Deligeorges - Si le naturalisme défend une &quot;conception modeste de l'humanité&quot;, il considère aussi que la &quot;nature embrasse tout ce qui existe&quot; et qu'il appartient aux sciences d'en proposer une vision mouvante, vivante et plurielle. - réalisé par : Dany Journo</description>
<author>podcast@radiofrance.com</author>
<category >Science & Medicine </category>
<enclosure url="http://rf.proxycast.org/1179796318600568832/16256-27.06.2016-ITEMA_21019982-0.mp 3" length="57022592" type="audio/mpeg" />
<guid >http://media.radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/16256-27.06.2016-ITEMA_21019982-0 .mp3</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
<podcastRF:businessReference>6256</podcastRF:businessReference>
<podcastRF:magnetothequeID>2016C6256S0179</podcastRF:magnetothequeID>
<podcastRF:stepID>12674778</podcastRF:stepID>
<itunes:author>Stéphane Deligeorges</itunes:author>
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:keywords>Quelle,place,pour,le,naturalisme,dans,le,monde,d'aujourd'hui,?< /itunes:keywords>
<itunes:subtitle>Émission du 27.06.2016</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>durée : 00:59:04 - par : Stéphane Deligeorges - Si le naturalisme défend une &quot;conception modeste de l'humanité&quot;, il considère aussi que la &quot;nature embrasse tout ce qui existe&quot; et qu'il appartient aux sciences d'en proposer une vision mouvante, vivante et plurielle. - réalisé par : Dany Journo</itunes:summary>
<itunes:duration>00:59:04</itunes:duration>
</item>

I see the .xml refers both the "old" url and the "new" url, but with different HTML codes.
Could the difference between <enclosure> and <guid> play a role in my "problem" ?

Perhaps the authors of that .xml are not following the best practices?
I have no idea about what that would be.
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by Roger Wilmut1,Helpful

Roger Wilmut1 Sep 3, 2016 10:04 AM in response to erratix
Level 9 (77,886 points)

iTunes

Sep 3, 2016 10:04 AM in response to erratix

The feed is fine. The 'enclosure' tag contains the URL that iTunes uses to access the media file. The 'guid' tag is used by iTunes to determine that there is a new episode. It can be anything as long as it's unique (and that includes other podcasts) so, though not everyone does this, many people use the media file URL because obviously that is unique. iTunes doesn't use it to access the media file. The problem is probably caused by a failure somewhere to handle the redirect.

One thing is that both URLs contain stops in the date; since normally in a URL (once you've got past the domain) a stop indicates the file type, e.g. .mp3. Personally I wouldn't do this, I'd use a hyphen instead (not a slash for obvious reasons) but since it's not causing me any problems it seems unlikely that this is an issue. It will be interesting to hear if anyone else using El Capitan has a problem with this.
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by erratix,

erratix Sep 3, 2016 10:51 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1
Level 1 (13 points)

iTunes

Sep 3, 2016 10:51 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks Roger.

I just don't see why they would want to keep 'enclosure' pointing to a file that does not exist and redirects to the real file.
If they have no real reason to keep it coded the way it is, could changing the url of the 'enclosure' to be the same as 'guid' not solve the (my) problem? I see that the filenames are identical anyway.
Maybe this is a sloppy leftover from a migration, that was temporarily working with a redirect.

Any ideas what in OS X could intervene in the redirect?
I tried disabling my antivirus (ESET Endpoint), but no change.
I also disabled my OS X firewall, but no change.

I have a fairly clean and minimal system, with no added extensions.

Or is there any iTunes file related to podcasts I should look for, see it there is not something wrong with it?
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by Roger Wilmut1,

Roger Wilmut1 Sep 3, 2016 11:29 AM in response to erratix
Level 9 (77,886 points)

iTunes

Sep 3, 2016 11:29 AM in response to erratix

The usual reason for this sort of redirect is that the first URL is a 'proxy' which can be logged to track the number of times the file is accessed, then it passes the request on to the actual file (where it may not be possible to get a log). If you can put the real URL in the feed instead of the proxy you will lose any tracking of this sort, but it might well solve the problem. You could try it with one file first and see it it works (you will need to refresh the subscription in iTunes, and remember that the Store may not update to see the modification for a couple of days or so).

I've no idea why the redirect is falling over in your case. Sometimes redirects cause trouble, though it usually affects everyone.
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by erratix,

erratix Sep 7, 2016 8:39 AM in response to erratix
Level 1 (13 points)

iTunes

Sep 7, 2016 8:39 AM in response to erratix

OK I am not progressing.

I think I will have to ask a question to OS X 10.11 experts, see if they can find out what in my system could cause redirects to misbehave since 10.11.4.

Looks like the problem might not be in iTunes.
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