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My feedburner podcast feed won't publish in Itunes

Hi All,

I am having what look like similar kind of problems with trying to publish my podcast feed from Feedburner to Itunes.

my feedburner feed is this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/newperspectivespodcast

but whenever I try to submit this feed to itunes I get an error with these words: "we had difficulty downloading episodes from your feed"

Then when I go to "my podcasts" in Itunes I can sometimes see the title of the feed but without any content and sometimes nothing comes through.

This is the first time I have really ever had anything to do with the whole poidcast world so I am probably doing something wrong but now I see that quite a few other people have what look like related problems and challenges.

Can anyone help?

cheers

Roland Hanekroot

podcasts-OTHER

Posted on May 15, 2015 12:28 AM

Reply
8 replies

May 15, 2015 12:51 AM in response to rhanekroot

Your feed is not a podcast feed. It has no 'enclosure' tags containing the URLs of your media files, and indeed appears to have no reference to media files in it anywhere.

it's not clear how you are creating your feed, whether in Feedburner itself or in another program or service before submitting to Feedburner. Looking at the coding for the top episode there is a link to a web page for that episode containing an embedded player: this sort of thing won't work in iTunes. You must provide a direct link to the media file - in the case of that episode it looks as if it may be

ia800308.us.archive.org/11/items/OldFashionedMarketingTheModernWayWithScottForre st201505141830/Old-fashioned%20marketing%20the%20modern%20way%20with%20scott%20f orrest%20-%202015-05-14%201830.mp3


preceded by https:// (the forum truncates the URL if I post it in full). You should be using http not https.

Incidentally the quality of this file is terrible, with serious compression artefacts and even cutting out meaning that the speech is actually unintelligible in places - your bitrate of 122kb/s stereo is a bit low but I wouldn't have expected the results to be that bad. You may want to try using a higher bitrate (less compression); are you sourcing some of the speakers via Skype or another VOIP service? that might cause problems.


You may find it helpful to look at my 'Get you started' page on podcasting: http://wilmut.uk/pc

May 15, 2015 1:02 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thank you so much Roger.

I will certainly have a look at your website and do my learning there...much appreciated.

I am surprised that you say the quality is below par. When I play the file back at archive.org it sounds crystal clear to me. The file is created from a webinar I have run myself last night and then the recording is a conversion from Mp4 to Mp3 at a fairly low bit rate to keep the file size within reasonable bounds (as it is the Mp3 is 30% bigger than the original Mp4 even at the low bit rate... if I covert at a higher quality the file size goes to hundreds of megabites)

but if that's what needs to happen than of course I can do that... but it surpises me, like I said because it sounds fine to me when I play it back from archive.org.


On the feeds thing though... If I use the URL for the actual file on on archive.org though I am not really placing a feed in Itunes, rather an individual podcast... and I would have to submit a new podcast manually every time a create one... is that right? I can't simply submit a feed from my blog somehow and every time I create a new blog post with a podcast in it, it gets automatically uploaded into Itunes, like it happens in Feedburner?

Kind Regards,

Roland Hanekroot

May 15, 2015 1:33 AM in response to rhanekroot

The file URL I posted no longer works and the player has disappeared from the website page for the episode. When I listened to a few short bits of the file I though the quality was pretty poor, but if you are happy with it, it's your podcast and your decision. I just offered it as an an additional comment.


In the meantime, you don't submit the mp3 file URL to iTunes, you have to place within the 'enclosure' tag in your feed - either by getting it into the original feed or using Feedburner's 'Smartcats' facility.


When the feed is working, and has been accepted by the iTunes Store, all you have to do is to add episodes and re-publish the feed; the Store will update automatically after a couple of days or so and subscribers will see the change immediately.


Also, from what you say there may be a little confusion over teminology: a podcast is the overall 'wrapper' for a number of episodes; you submit the 'feed' which contains all the information to iTunes, and then the episodes will be listed and can be updated. You can't place individual episodes in iTunes, only the feed with the episodes contained therein.

May 15, 2015 1:36 AM in response to rhanekroot

Hi Roger,

I am starting to go a little cross eyed... I'm lost. I've read your article on your website and various other articles and things about this and I just can't really make sense of it all.

I'm just not sure what I should do. Is the problem that I shouldn't be using "the internet archive" to host my MP3 files?

when i look at the feed from my blog http://www.newperspectives.com.au/feed/ and submit that to feed validator it tells me that it is a valid feed but that

and when I submit the actual URL of the MP3 on internet archive I get pages of gibberish... but it is still a valid RSS .

I get the feeling that this is all too hard.

Can you advice me what the dummies approach would be to publish a regular podcast? on my existing blog and that people can subscribe to in the simplest way?

much thanks roland hanekroot

May 15, 2015 1:44 AM in response to rhanekroot

People do use archive.org to host their media files, you just have to obtain the actual file URL by looking at the list of alternative media on the right, and copying the URL for direct access to the media file. You need to check it in a browser and make sure that it plays there, not downloads or leads to a web page or an embedded player, and the URL should begin with http not https (just removing the 's' should work). Otherwise you can host media files on any ordinary web server provided that it supports 'byte range requests' (the method used by iPhones to access the file, and mandatory in iTunes). If you provide me with the URL of a media file I can check for this.


You then have to get that into your feed. As the feed doesn't indicate what the method is you are using to create it I can't say what you should do to achieve that. The point is that it has to be a podcast feed, not just a blog feed - the media file URL has to be within an 'enclosure' tag, not just a link in a description or an embedded player.


You can test your feed by subscribing manually in iTunes from the 'File' menu. If the episodes with media files appear then you are on the way to success. If they don't, then obviously you have more to do. Episode which don't have properly referenced media files won't appear in iTunes.

May 15, 2015 1:57 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks again roger... I owe you a beer... but as youre in England and I'm in Australia that may be tricky to organise... but I owe you one anyway.

so the actual file in archive.org is this one: https://archive.org/details/OldFashionedMarketingTheModernWayWithScottForrest201 505141830

and

this is the actual MP3 file on archive.org

https://ia600308.us.archive.org/11/items/OldFashionedMarketingTheModernWayWithSc ottForrest201505141830/Old-fashioned%20m…


and then I have used the embed code that internet archive provides to simply embed the media into my wordpress blog post... this is the code internet archive provides: <iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/OldFashionedMarketingTheModernWayWithScottForrest20150 5141830" width="500" height="140" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>


although I changed the height to 40 instead of 140 pixels.


Then I gave this blog post the "podcasts" category which then becomes the submission to feedburner: http://www.newperspectives.com.au/archives/category/podcasts/feed/


Does that make things clearer from your end?

regards,

Roland Hanekroot

May 15, 2015 2:04 AM in response to rhanekroot

It's no good using the 'embed' code. The feed must have the actual MP3 file URL which is what you give, but you should change the http to https. (The server does accept byte range requests, so that's OK.)


As you are using WordPress, you may need to use a plugin such as PowerPress - I'm not familiar with WordPress but I get the impression that it won't create podcast feeds on its own. Certainly the feed URL you post is not a podcast feed - unlike the version I looked at earlier it doesn't include the 'iTunes declaration' in the top line, nor any 'itunes:...' tags - without an 'itunes:image' tag containing the URL of an image which is at least 1400 x 1400 px (and less than 500kB) your feed won't be accepted even if it contains the media files (which it doesn't). Again, links in description tags or embedded players will not work in iTunes.

My feedburner podcast feed won't publish in Itunes

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