[Plugin: Blubrry PowerPress] podpress import strangeness, prevents saving posts

The cover image is copied from PodPress by design, we assume you created that image for that episode for a reason and would want to keep it with the media.

I just tested the behavior your reporting and I am unable to duplicate the problem. I edited a blog post with a video mp4 linked and a poster image URL. I clicked the click ‘Modify existing podcast episode’, found the ‘Poster Image’ value and deleted it, then clicked ‘Update’ (the blue WordPress save button to save the blog post and everything else on the page) and it removed the Poster URL from the database.

Please test again, if it’s still not deleting, please email me cio [at] rawvoice.com, I’ll send you instructions so I can duplicate your setup in our test environment to try to replicate the problem.

The poster image imported in all of my cases was the default podpress one, which was not ever used. It even still had the double-slash typo in it from an older podpress settings glitch.

The problem I had run into is when editing the post without removing the poster image value. That happened because the first few times because I didn’t realize that value existed… it was hidden by the small display window of the enclosure custom field. I never noticed that value was even there until I clicked “Modify podcast episode” and discovered it.

After removing the poster image value, saving the updated post works perfectly, but not before removing that value. And I’ve been able to duplicate that behavior on three different sites now.

It just made me curious what people who do have poster images are doing (or if they never edit old episodes to fix links and typos), and if the problem exists for all poster images, or just the default podpress one.

The need to fix that is kinda moot now anyway, since I do have to edit each and every podcast episode to update the incorrect or missing time duration and file size values to make iTunes happy (habits of others from years gone by come back around to create more work!)

If it helps, if your video is in H.264 (.mp4/.m4v) you can quickly get the duration information simply by clicking ‘verify’.

The checkbox to modify the episode is correct behavior, we put it there by design so the episode box options do not clutter the edit post page. The thought is that once you’ve created your episode, you would most likely be making modifications to the post content only. The checkbox doesn’t take long to load, technically it’s just a hidden div that we display when you check the box.

(belated reply)

But the enclosures I was updating at the time were audio enclosures, over 300 of them, with maybe 5 more of them video enclosures, and switching from podpress to powerpress added the video poster image to ALL of the audio enclosures, which is what caused the edit fail issue to begin with.

I’m not sure about the track record for other people, but the powerpress media verify link fails 95% of the time when the media (both audio & video) is not on the same server as the website, and that’s both saddening and maddening, especially when faced with cleaning up & correcting file sizes and durations that were either incorrect or never entered by other folks over a span of several years.

Also, the thought that people do not ever move their media hosting is rather short-sighted, and so adorable ??

I know lots of people, including ourselves, that have had to move media hosting more than once over the past 8 years, and the need to manually update 500+ episodes each for multiple sites was almost enough to make me switch back to podpress, since that and obfuscated media URLs (to prevent media poachers) are things that plugin still does more than well. If it still handled Podtrac properly, I honestly may not have switched to powerpress to begin with for most of the legacy sites, and just kept powerpress on the newer sites only.

There may well be something I could do, like run an SQL script in the database, but this time around there’s no easy way to do a search/replace.

Also, the thought that people do not ever move their media hosting is rather short-sighted, and so adorable ??

I agree, and the capability is in PowerPress (But not in PodPress). Go to PowerPress menu, select “Tools”, then select the “Find and Replace for Episode URLs”. We made this wizard to help folks move their media to other servers, folders, etc.. It’s rather advanced find/replace that also verifies the URL’s (checks that they are 200 OK). This feature should resolve your last 3 paragraphs.

But the enclosures I was updating at the time were audio enclosures, over 300 of them, with maybe 5 more of them video enclosures, and switching from podpress to powerpress added the video poster image to ALL of the audio enclosures, which is what caused the edit fail issue to begin with.

I understand your complaint, but to not import those images would be much worse. I know you’re upset with this, but if you used the feature in PodPress and we did not import the images you would be just as, if not more, upset.

If this was happening for audio, you can just ignore them. PowerPress does not display the image unless you setup the Flow Player Classic to display an image for audio anyway.

This is a good example of the problems in PodPress, why it stores an image that’s exactly the same for each episode is beyond me. I don’t think this is the fault of PowerPress.

I’m not sure about the track record for other people, but the powerpress media verify link fails 95% of the time when the media (both audio & video) is not on the same server as the website, and that’s both saddening and maddening, especially when faced with cleaning up & correcting file sizes and durations that were either incorrect or never entered by other folks over a span of several years.

There are three reasons the Verify feature may not work for you. The 95% failure (sometimes works) makes me believe that the 2nd of the following list is the problem, and if you can contact me I think I have an idea how to resolve it.

First, explanation of the Verify feature: When you click verify, PowerPress does a HTTP request using a byte range for the first 1MB of the media file. It’s doing a number of things with this bite-serving request. The request verifies the media is at the URL specified and obtains the file size. Then if your PHP version has the appropriate modules, it will detect the duration of the media file as well as checks the mp3’s bit rate and sample rate.

1. Firewall / ModSecurity – If your web hosting has some odd configured firewall or mod_security setup aggressively, it will not allow your server to loop-back to itself to download the file. If this is the problem, verify would most likely never work.

2. DNS resolved incorrectly on server – If your server does not know itself, meaning that when the web site domain name is resolved it resolves to the same IP address that the rest of the world knows, then that can cause random problems depending on your web hosting environment. Your web hosting (if not yourself) can add lines to your /etc/hosts file to resolve the domain name in question to localhost. This is usually a random issue.

3. Byte-Serving Not Supported – If your media is on a server that does not support byte-serving (required for iTunes) then the verify feature will not be able to detect the duration information, since it is using the same technology to get the first 1MB of the media. You should still be able to detect the file size in this case since PowerPress uses logic to fallback to a head request of the byte request fails.

Through answering this complaint, I have an idea that may resolve the 2nd problem. If you can contact me cio [at] rawvoice dot com, I’ll work on a fix in PowerPress that you can test to see if it fixes your 95% problem. I’d also like to schedule at time to discuss the problems via phone, sometimes a 5-10 minute phone call can resolve the “tone” one uses, which cannot be gauged via text.

You misunderstood what my complaint about the poster images was: Powerpress CREATED poster images using the podpress default image, a URL that became invalid once podpress was removed from the site, and I believe that is what caused the editing problems.

Powerpress set the enclosure poster image to be the default podpress poster image, but that image ceased to exist when podpress was deleted from the site. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that image becoming an invalid URL lis what caused the editing problem… and to me, that problem should not be ignored.

I was unable to save any edits on any posts with audio enclosures. The posts with video enclosures still had valid poster image URLs, and saving edits on those posts still worked fine.

For the posts with audio enclosures, only after I selected “modify podcast episode” and cleared that invalid poster image URL out of that field could I save my edits.

If it globally affects behaviors in WordPress, I don’t think that’s a “just ignore them” issue.

If I’d never gone back to edit some of those old posts, I never would have known the problem was there, or that it had been introduced by the Powerpress conversion.

What I don’t know for sure is if that happens with all invalid image URLs, or if it’s just a podpress conversion side effect, but it’s something folks should be aware of.

My guess is that if I hadn’t selected the options for Powerpress to use the podpress data it might not have done that, but since not doing that would have made the old podcast episodes non-existent, that wouldn’t have been an optimal choice ??

So couldn’t there also be an option for someone to choose whether or not to allow Powerpress import those poster images?

For anyone who’s not been using them (despite the fact that podpress inserts the default in there for every enclosure), Powerpress could just acknowledge that option, drop that field, and any potential WordPress editing problems caused by having an invalid poster image URL goes away.

As for the find/replace tool, that is not an option with the current media host… the URL prefix is unique for each and every file, and as such cannot be updated that way.

Granted I would have had this current media problem with podpress too, but previously all I had to do was update the default media URL in podpress, and ALL posted media would automatically use that prefix… no search/replace needed.

I do like Powerpress because it isn’t as bloated as podpress, but there are still some things that podpress seems to make simpler and do better, and for a lot of these shows & sites I’m maintaining, I first have to figure out if the extra work of cleaning up data after a conversion to Powerpress is worth it or not to me, each time it’s time to do a site update.

I think the problem is you wrote this implying that lots of folks have this import problem, and so far you are the only one who has told me of this problem with the images getting imported from PodPress being “wrong”. TI understand you frustration but again the data was there so we copied it. I looked again at PowerPress import logic, it only imports the image url if it’s set in the PodPress meta data.

I think the real problem is that most folks who used PodPress who did audio never configured the video coverart image option, and at some point in your PodPress you did have it configured.

If changing the Media URL option in PodPress changed your Media URLs, then the “Find and Replace for Episode URLs” option is a dead ringer feature. Please, just take a look at the screen, there’s a lot more to it than you think, you can first preview what will be changed, then you can check/uncheck what episodes get changed, as well as verify them that they exist with the new URL. I believe it even works with regular expressions, so you could replace portions of the URLs like directory paths easily.

There;s something wrong with www.ads-software.com forums, I’ve replied with some other answers as well and they are not appearing. I have an idea which should fix your 95% verify problem failures, please send a message to cio at rawvoice dot com, thanks!