Improper handling of first item in a new feed

 This is a random bug that seems to happen to me from time to time, but this morning it's happened more than once.

When I subscribe to a new feed, the first item in that feed (usually I'm subscribing to a feed from Podiobooks.com and there's only one item in the feed since I have them only release one new item per day in each book feed) will get placed into the wrong playlist when synchronized to my iTunes library.  Also, it will have it's title changed to the corresponding first entry in the wrong podcast's feed.

Example:

I have a subscription to Podcast X, which is long-running and (let's say) is on episode 15, with no problems.

I subscribe to Podcast Y, set it up to sync with the library in the sync tab, and save that option using the save button in the toolbar.

I want the first episode, so I go and manually start the download by right-clicking on the first item in Podcast Y and choosing "Get Enclosure".

When it's done downloading, it get placed in the already existing playlist for Podcast X.  Also, it has had it's title changed to the title of the first item in Podcast X's feed.

If I had to make a guess, it seems like it might be a bug in code which is checking for an already existing playlist in iTunes, if such code exists.  The wrongly chosen podcast seems to always be next to or within 2 spaces of the new podcast alphabetically, and if I remember correctly, almost always lower than the new podcast alphabetically, though I can't be 100% sure on either case.

Thanks for the note.  I'll check into this to make sure the bug will not be carried over to the next version.  Just out of curiosity is Podiobooks using the same file name for all enclosures in a given feed or even across their feeds since only one enclosure is appearing in a given feed at once?

They have more than one entry in each feed... the feed will contain all episodes previously released.  Each enclosure in a feed will have a unique name, both within that feed and across all feeds (usually whatever the file was named by the author... I suppose it's possible for a book to have the same name as an enclosure in another feed, but I haven't seen it happen).  The only weirdness is that they let you limit the rate at which new content appears in a feed.  For example, if there are 10 episodes of a book ready you can choose to have them appear one per day in your feed for that book.  Once an item is in your feed, though, it's there for good... if you subscribe to that same feed in another RSS reader, it will contain all the episodes released to your feed so far.  From the RSS reader's end, there's nothing different about it than any other feed.

I wonder if there's an issue with adding it via COM to iTunes...

Also, I didn't get the e-mail that someone had replied to this post, which is why it was a while before I checked back.  Sorry about that, I'll try to make sure I follow this more closely.

Okay, thanks for the follow up.  Over all it doesn't sound like the feed is the culprit.  Perhaps as you say it is an iTunes issue.  The current release of iTunes probably has a difference in the dll's against which I've programmed.  For a while there every time a new iTunes came out I had to recompile HF with the new library.  Frankly, I'm a little surprised HF still works with the current at all.  It's probably showing its age though.  I'll keep an eye out for these issues as I work on the next version.