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Nov 26
I have what I guess would be called an iPod Video. It’s a 30 gig jobber that plays video. I’m sure it’s a solid two generations out of touch by now, but there are some things about it that drive me nuts:
- This is probably a feature by some standards, but not by me. When I’m in the Music->Podcasts directory and chance across a video podcast, I would like to watch the video with that click. I don’t want to listen to the audio-only. Logically, I can understand it. If I’m in the “Music” directory, I should expect to hear only audio. But from a purely pragmatic end-user experience, a podcast is a podcast. If I click on a podcast and it’s of the video variety, I want to SEE something. I don’t want to have to click back 3 levels of menus, then back down through Videos->Video Podcasts to get to see the thing I should have been able to see 5 or more clicks ago.
- I don’t think I ever want to listen to just the audio on a video podcast, so this feature makes even less sense.
- Pause/fast-forward/rewind works oddly during video podcasts. It doesn’t allow me to rewind sometimes. I can circle my thumb around the scroll wheel a few times to rewind by a couple of minutes, but the second I let go the video starts playing stubbornly from where it started. Sometimes, I can click on the center of the wheel after scrolling back a little to “stick the landing,” but that’s iffy.
- When I’m in the last minute of a five minute podcast, if I pause it for too long, it autocompletes the video and pushes me out to the Video Podcast menu. When I hit PLAY again, it starts at the beginning of the podcast.
- Video playback is a slow-starter. Not a major problem, but an annoyance I should mention while I’m listing them all.
- Finally, when I listen to an audio podcast, I’d appreciate seeing the right cover art for it. It’s completely random, but there are times when the wrong podcast’s cover art shows up on screen while a completely unrelated podcast plays.
Nov 26, 2007 @ 20:56:39
I 100% agree completely with your first point. It annoys me to no end to have to scroll backwards from audio podcasts to get to the video podcasts.
Can you spin the click wheel to rewind stuff?
Nov 27, 2007 @ 00:01:24
You’re supposed to be able to spin the click wheel to rewind a video, but I find that as soon as I let go of the click wheel, the video just decides to play somewhere else, either at the place I STARTED rewinding at, or somewhere close to the end of the video. It happened to be again today after I posted this story. Very annoying. I should YouTube it and let one of the Apple bloggers spotlight this problem.
Nah.
Nov 27, 2007 @ 11:54:30
I have a similar problem with my iPod, although it usually doesn’t just play from the end — it will either play from where I started or play from a point close to where I stopped the scroll wheel.
My guess is that the iPod “splits” the video into logical chunks. If you don’t scroll past a virtual marker, it doesn’t recognize the fact that you rewound. And once you are between markers, it’ll play from the one you just passed.
I don’t understand why it does that, but that’s my theory on what it does.
I also agree that listening to a video podcast with audio only is stupid, and I also have run into the autocompletion of a video. Annoying.