re: Zune 4.0 downloads podcasts that have already been played

Why does the new software insist upon downloading podcasts that I have already listened to? It ignores the number of podcasts that I have set to be kept. Also, even though it downloads the podcasts, it does not show them as available in the Zune screen. Each of these episodes still has the Download button. If I click on the button, it instantly shows up, so it does not need to be downloaded again. The system seems to have decided that I MIGHT want to download these episodes again, and does it in the background so that I won't have to wait. I suppose that this could be considered a feature, rather than a bug. Just one that I don't like very much. I tried manually deleting the podcasts from the directory, but when I started Zune back up, it proceeded to re-download them again.

I am glad that I have a terabyte drive, because we are talking about 80 GBytes of files that I don't need but can't seem to get rid of. Unsubscribing from the podcasts, and telling it to delete the files does not actually delete them from my system. I have to manually delete them. When I resubscribed to the podcasts. It insists on downloading the episodes all over again!

Strangely enough, this does not happen with ALL the podcasts. The settings for each podcast do not not seem to make any difference. Real Time With Bill Maher, MSNBC Countdown (video), MSNBC Rachel Maddow (video), and The Onion News Network (audio) all have the problem, for example, while Onion News Network (video) does not.

BTW, do the Zune support staff read these posts, or is there a better place that I should log this bug report?

Additionally, do we still have to open the Zune software daily to find and download new podcasts, or does it run something in the background now that will pull down new podcasts automatically?  I ask because some daily podcasts are removed after a few days, but if I'm out of town or don't have access to my laptop, I end up missing some of those if I don't leave the Zune software open.  That's a royal pain.

I had the same problem what i did was delete every file that held, was, or new of a podcast this included the conversion folder and not just that folder but all the files and folders in the folder holding that folder.I tried each individually but for some reason it still downloaded all podcasts even if they were not subscribed to and where deleted. Then i deleted the zune folder that held the transcoded files cache aka the conversion folder. once i re-opened zune it had to refind all my music and i had to resubscribe to the podcast there are downloading fine for now.to find your conversion folder it is in your settings and then devices
ps it should be a hidden folder on your hard drive
 good luck

I'm having the same probem - it's trying to download 400 podcasts!  It's even downloading podcasts that I've unsubscribed from and deleted from within Zune. Very annoying, and basically forces me to cancel the downloads everytime I launch the software.

Anyone know how to stop this? Why is it downloading podcasts which are no longer in my podcast list?

Thanks

Update

I ran the Zune Media Collection reset tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=86B2A33D-9BF8-45F6-89FF-B9A6236AA37D&displaylang=en), and things now seem ok. Zune had to rebuild my music library which didn't take long. Only hassle is having to re-subscribing to my podcasts and mark them as played. But it seems to work.

I also ran into this issue with a number of the podcasts on my Zune.  Items that are marked as played and have been deleted from the podcast are now in the process of re-downloading on my computer.  The problem with some of these podcasts is that they contain huge video files, for example NASA 360, ESOcast, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Podcasts.

Right now I'm allowing the re-downloads to continue, hoping that this will be a one-time issue and will go away.  But I'm also seeing that these files are being saved to my hard drive.  Hard disk space is gradually being consumed by the re-downloads.

What's even funnier about this issue is, if I jump over to the podcast collection and view the list, these items are still showing with a Download button, as if they are not present and still waiting to be downloaded.  Which means the downloads are not being recognized by the Zune 4.0 software, even though I can see them showing up in the folder where the podcast is located on my hard drive.

What's worse is, I just got done only a week or two ago of unsubscribing and resubscribing to these podcasts, to fix issues with my podcast lists due to the fact that the Zune 3.0 software wasn't recognizing the podcasts as being on a secondary drive, even though the podcasts were in the folder scans lists.  Personally, I'd like to be able to chose where individual podcasts are saved to, as this is forcing me to keep all of the podcasts on my main drive, consuming space that could instead be taken from a secondary drive.  (And even if I moved the entire podcast to the secondary drive, the podcast episodes still downloaded to the main drive, dividing the podcast between the two locations.)

I also don't want to clean and resubscribe to every podcast either, as I have a large list that I am listening to, and this is something that will take me days to redo and redownload, not to mention having to go back through the lists and figure out what was marked as played versus unplayed, an exercise that may take weeks to redo.

On a side note, I used to be able to switch away from downloads and back again, and items that were finished downloading would be cleaned up.  This is no longer occurring.  I don't mind if errors stick around, but it would be nice if those pesky In Collection items would go away.  Having to scroll down nearly 1,000 downloads to find out where the software is at is a pain in the neck.

 Kalnir wrote:

I also ran into this issue with a number of the podcasts on my Zune.  Items that are marked as played and have been deleted from the podcast are now in the process of re-downloading on my computer.  The problem with some of these podcasts is that they contain huge video files, for example NASA 360, ESOcast, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Podcasts.

Right now I'm allowing the re-downloads to continue, hoping that this will be a one-time issue and will go away.  But I'm also seeing that these files are being saved to my hard drive.  Hard disk space is gradually being consumed by the re-downloads.

...

On a side note, I used to be able to switch away from downloads and back again, and items that were finished downloading would be cleaned up.  This is no longer occurring.  I don't mind if errors stick around, but it would be nice if those pesky In Collection items would go away.  Having to scroll down nearly 1,000 downloads to find out where the software is at is a pain in the neck.

 

I'm right there with ya Kalnir on both counts and am seeing the same behavior with my Zune80 and new software. I'm also missing the clearing of the downloads list for completed downloads. This looks like a new feature, the not clearing b/c if you click the 'in collection' button, it takes you over to that podcast in your collection where you can play it right away. I wish that feature was toggleable so that we could have it either way.

My theory on the downloading is that the new software for some reason isn't recognizing that the podcasts have already been played (greyed out) and as such is downloading them again. I had my settings to only keep 3 episodes and stuff that I had been working through, like College Humor, is downloading all over again.

Interestingly enough, it isn't all my podcasts that are doing this, nor all played episodes in the podcasts it is doing this for. So far, just video podcasts, which are also ones I have set to go oldest to newest. I also wonder if that could be a little funkiness when you install the software first, it doesn't really know about the zune yet b/c it hasn't been updated yet, and it goes off and does something odd.

Sounds like you guys are having the same issue as me:

http://forums.zune.net/513266/ShowPost.aspx

This is a follow-up to my earlier post.  The bulk of the podcasts that were re-downloading (mostly audio, but some video) completed and are not re-downloading after restarting the software.  They are also not being recognized as being present by the Zune 4.0 software (the Download button is still present).  The In Collection items were cleaned up after the current list of downloads completed (sometime on the overnight, so I didn't see it happen), so that at least was good to see.

However, there are around 40 of the items that either fail to download because they don't exist, or fail because the video or audio file is not supported by the Zune software.  When I encountered this issue with Zune 3.0, I set these items to mark as played and cancelled their downloads, precisely to avoid having them spend half an hour or longer re-downloading every time I opened the software.  But Zune 4.0 is insisting on downloading these files.

I need a way to mark these files permanently in error, so they won't keep re-downloading.  A large number of these are either slow downloads or large file downloads, and it is a waste of time and electricity and bandwidth to keep re-downloading them over and over and over, especially after I have already told the software that they are "played".

 RuaridhCampbell wrote:

Update

I ran the Zune Media Collection reset tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=86B2A33D-9BF8-45F6-89FF-B9A6236AA37D&displaylang=en), and things now seem ok. Zune had to rebuild my music library which didn't take long. Only hassle is having to re-subscribing to my podcasts and mark them as played. But it seems to work.

Yes, the media collection reset tool works for this problem though you have to re-subscribe & set series settings again.
It seems that something (database related) went wrong when you updated the Zune software.

FYI
Be aware "Video CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" may be added to your video collection when you rebuild your collection.

Like others I too had an issue with podcast corruption after software conversion.  I agree that the zune media collection reset tools fixes the problem.  However, there are a couple of minor side-effects that you might want to consider. 

The first is the device is no longer linked to an account - it is considered a "guest".  Re-establishing the account link is no big deal, just use the button for it on the device-->summary screen.

The second issue is once the link is re-established all of the contents previously stored on the device is no longer part of the sync group.  That means when you view the sync groups nothing is listed or is accessible for auto updates.  Furthermore, when you look at the "total space used" graphic at the bottom of the device-->summary screen you will see the space used allocated toward "reserved space and content from other computers" instead of segments for music, video, podcasts, etc. 

If this is important to you then to clean up this mess you will need to remove all of the content and copy it back onto the device after the account link is re-established.  Again it's no big deal, it's just a PITA.

 RuaridhCampbell wrote:

Update

I ran the Zune Media Collection reset tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=86B2A33D-9BF8-45F6-89FF-B9A6236AA37D&displaylang=en), and things now seem ok. Zune had to rebuild my music library which didn't take long. Only hassle is having to re-subscribing to my podcasts and mark them as played. But it seems to work.

Hey, thanks for linking to that little app, really helps. Heh, until they fix their bugs, I'm fine with removing the collection to get rid of the dupes I have. Doesn't take very long to re-build my collection, anyway.