Custom chapter marks / Timed episode annotations

[caioau]

Hello from Brazil, sorry for my bad english. Would like to suggest this feature

Would be nice to save the times of the highlight so you can return to the highlights after listening the episode.

[mfietz]

Thought about this feature a while back. Implementation would be rather easy (not a high priority, though). But I could not come up with a good spot in the audio player view where the create chapter mark button would fit into the ui. Both the action bar at the top and the control panel at the bottom are already quite overloaded. We could have one of those FABs in the chapter list, but these things tend to get in the way of interacting with the UI.

[caioau]

I was thinking a simple way to create a chapter highlight, holding the favorite (star) button for 5 seconds

[mfietz]

Did you know that you can already do that? Just kidding :> That is my way of saying: No one will ever find that... Could be a shortcut (rather not), but not the normal way to do it.

[darthwalsh]

I often have laugh-out-loud moments while listening to podcasts (Thanks to AntennaPod for enabling that!) and I'd love to share those later with my friends :D

Is this correct: customer chapter marks are not implemented yet, but canonical chapter marks are implemented? Darn, after reading http://antennapod.org/ I thought custom marks would be supported.

[darthwalsh]

RE: where should the button go in the UI: a FAB in the chapter list UI sounds awesome. Or a [+Custom] button pinned to the top/bottom of the chapter list?

[mfietz]

Not a huge fan of the FAB as it tends to get in the way. On the other hand, the action bar can be hard to reach when only using one hand...

[keunes]

after reading http://antennapod.org/ I thought custom marks would be supported. (@darthwalsh)

What made you think that? Should we adjust the wording somewhere?

• not a big fan of a FAB b/c it's not used in other places either (e.g. feed overview); ux inconsistency
• a button in the action bar isn't really handy indeed
• a button at the bottom of the list is I think very unpractical

So all in all I'd go for a FAB still

[darthwalsh]

@keunes from http://antennapod.org/ I clicked on the link to https://auphonic.com/blog/2013/07/03/chapter-marks-and-enhanced-podcasts/ and started reading and didn't realize I had left "podcast user" documentation and that I had entered "podcast author" instructions.

I guess I was expecting links on the antennapod home page to lead to antennapod user documentation? I'm not sure anything should change, but thanks for considering it :)

[ghost]

Any update here? :)

If it's just a problem because of not finding the right position for this function, how about putting it to the "Share" menu. There it's already possible to share a episode on a specific timemark.

[ajay-gh]

Since above feature request is a little more specific than the OP's request, I clone it here for later reference.

On long(ish) podcasts of certain quality (e.g. a BBC documentary), one often comes across a novel statement, or a remark, something you would like to hear again. But only after having listened the podcast all the way to the end. It would be really useful if one could mark a position during playback WITH ONE CLICK or touch, ideally from within the pull-down menu or from the lock screen. Accuracy is irrelevant, +/- 5 secs is good enough. And if this marker could also be shared (may be with a little note), this would even be better.

[CarelS072]

Just thinking out loud, is it worth updating the functionality of the bookmark button (or having a toggle to switch its functionality, or when in the queue, favourite on the OnLongClick will work as expected with playback position = current_position || 0:00s, where when on the episode it will capture the position ) ? IE to me: When I want to be reminded of a particular section of a podcast I wouldn't mind that the bookmark function will also capture the position of that podcast, similar as a bookmark to mark the page of a book, not the book itself.

If I wanted to re-listen a favourited podcast I often would need to reset the playback position anyway due to it being at the end of a show but not the end of the podcast ex: 10 seconds of silence. That would be the reason for me not to be bothered by the altered functionality of the bookmark button, but I understand this is a personal preference.

The issue with my suggestion would be when you want to add multiple notes within 1 episode, how would UX then look like (badges, more complex OnLongClick interactions, etc). So by far not an ideal solution, however it is something :)

[6-AND-9]

Hi there guys, I just joined to pitch in. Yesterday I created a new feature request that is almost identical to this one (pointed out by @keunes).

What you call custom chapter marks I consider timed annotations. But is essentially the same thing, and a very useful feature at that.

Let me quote from the original post:

What I mean by this is the ability to add annotations (i.e. comments and tags) at certain (editable) times of the podcast episode. I guess they might take the format of either xml or json. Of course, they have to be connected to the episode played (by either a reference to the file, or to some internal link - I don't know how AntennaPod works on the inside).

This feature would necessitate adding a new tab in the episode viewer window, besides main, show notes, and chapters. A related feature would be to show these annotations at the times they are added on, so if the user has the screen on he can view them. They should be able to be exported later as a text file (but this is away from the main feature request).

Alright, so basically, this can be implemented by using custom chapter marks - but with added subfunctionality of tags, editable times, and commentary/text (which can be the name of the mark really). The text field should be able to accept at least 5000 characters, maybe even 10K (sometimes I leave long commentary or I transcribe the spoken text directly into the mark in PodcastAddict, which I want to get rid of to be honest).

Sorry for the long text. If I was a programmer I would implement this feature myself, no doubt, because I find it so useful.

[tonytamsf]

one suggestion on the UX, on the bottom have a arrow like ^ that allows to open up a box for someone to get ready to annotate after hearing something interesting.

Ideally Android 10, with live transcript, we will show the transcript as the show is playing in this pulled up area and you can scroll back to annotate a sentence and add a highlight ( think Kindle )

On devices that do not have live transcript, we show the audio wave from the last 5 minutes and let the user scrub forward and back. during the scrubbing, we can play the audio to let the user find the point to annotate. the user annotates the same way like Android 10. Then we resume to point where they left off.

For display, we can display annotations as a single dots along the audio scrub in the main player

[apahne]

This would be a great addition - at least for me. I use Podcasts or audio books as a sleeping aid together with the sleep timer. With a custom chapter mark I could easily come back.

The Audible app for example has that and I use it all the time. There you can set the mark with one click. The list of bookmarks then is reachable via the menu.

I have no need for notes, but if that would be useful for other users, why not.

[keunes]

on the bottom have a arrow like ^ that allows to open up a box [@tonytamsf]

Where would this arrow be placed? If you thought of the main player's lower area (where also playback controls are), that would create kind of a Matryoshka doll: pull up from miniplayer to get full player, click 'up' button in full player to get [what you described]. Same effect actually when done in the chaper marks 'tab'.

Alternative: add extra 'tab' (in addition to 'cover', 'description' and 'chapters') with info about functionality/what tonytamsf described.

[antennapod-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on AntennaPod Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.antennapod.org/t/bookmarks-inside-a-podcast/113/4

[estevaog3]

Hi, guys. I'm also looking forward to this feature. In my case, I listen to podcasts to learn languages. When there's some new or unknown word or expression, it would be really helpful if I could mark the time it happened so that I can easily find it later to listen again.

Suggestions

I have two suggestions on how this "add chapter mark" feature could fit in the player UI:

1. A button next to the episode title. This would be similar to PodcastAddict's approach (see the screenshot below), except that there would be no bookmark screen with a "+" button at the top. The user would immediately create a new chapter with just one action.

• Pros:
  1. Very intuitive, the user sees it and knows what it's meant to do;
  2. Simple action: just one click.
• Cons:
  1. Needs full player, as @keunes pointed out.

2. A shortcut: long press on play/pause button (for about 3 seconds) to add a new chapter mark.

• Pros:
  1. Works regardless of the screen that you're in: lock screen, with full or small player, in or out of the app (from the notifications player);
  2. Simple action as well.
• Cons:
  1. Not so intuitive. The user could never discover this feature. However, there could be a simple first-time guide to show it, as it would be a new feature. Or even better, in the chapter's episode screen, there could be a message instructing the user how to create custom chapters if the episode don't have any chapters, like: "Long press the play button to create a custom chapter mark"

What about the annotation functionality?

For my use case, there's no need to annotate at all. But, since there's users that might want it, as @andrejdam, I think that there could be three approaches:

1. Allow annotations to be added right after a new chapter mark is created. This meas that a dialog or another screen would be opened for the annotation be written.
2. Don't allow annotations to be added right after a new chapter mark is created. This meas that the user would need to navigate to the chapter's screen to edit the chapter mark.
3. Allow annotations to be added optionally right after a new chapter mark is created. By optionally I mean that a message would pop up (like a Toast) saying something like "Chapter mark created. Add annotation.". The text "Add annotation" would be in a color to give it more emphasis. The message would disappear in a couple of seconds.

Given all those suggestions, I will just leave my personal preferences: long press combined with first approach of annotations. Since I could long press in the player of the lock screen, I think it would be great, because I'm always listening and doing some chore. But, if I'm using the app while listening, it's far more likely that I might want to easily annotate as well, even though currently I don't need to do it.

[thoka]

Currently a click on the episode image is an abbreviation for play/pause. A longer click on the center of the image could for example display 8 marker icons around the center. To trigger this, you would have to slide your finger on the icon. This would allow a refined marking of a spot with only one gesture.

[tristan-k]

I'm so eagerly waiting for this feature. Why not give the user an option to activate the bespoken feature in the settings? This way it would not go in the way of the average user.

[Magier]

I'd also love this kind of feature! Seeing as podcasts have gained a lot of popularity over the past years it becomes an increasingly important source of information. I personally try to take notes while listening and it's a very cumbersome experience (across all podcast apps available for Android). I think the best example of the increasing popularity of this kind of feature would be airr.io (iOS only). With their recent improvement on how to take "Airquotes" I've received countless of recommendations to use to consume podcasts across all kinds of information channels.

[joelostblom]

I personally don't need annotations within the podcast app, but I think the functionality of custom bookmarks/chapters would be very useful when listening to podcast in a setting where it might be difficult to take notes in the moment. If this is implemented, I would like to suggest that there was an option to bind it to a hardware shortcut, such as a double click or long press of the headset button(s).

A usage scenario where this feature would be helpful is when you are listening to podcast while e.g. walking. Instead of pausing to jot down a note and the position where I heard something interesting, I could double click my headset and keep listening. Then when I get home I could go through any bookmarks I made and transfer them to my notetaking app. I think this would provide powerful educational use cases in AntennaPod, particularly when combined with transcripts as per #4935.

[thoka]

@keunes Could you provide a pointer to some information / example about what is expected to provide a mock-up ?

[keunes]

@thoka We don't have anything like that documented. But what I would expect is the person to read through most of the comments, see what makes sense and what the consensus is more or less, and make mock-ups that show layout and interaction of relevant screens. And use the open source tool Penpot.app for it.

(Actually I added the label for myself to do the above, but if anyone feels like doing it, I'd warmly welcome that.)

Were you interested in making mock-ups for this?

[mcaap]

I listen to a lot of podcasts and only recently discovered this amazing open source app. Prior to that, I was using other apps. I wanted the ability to quickly add notes while listening to a podcast. When I started using the App, I used to use the Share option and then copy the text using the Share dialog (Episode webpage + Playback position). Then I used to paste the text in a Notes app. Its cumbersome, since it takes a lot of taps. Moreover, I dont want to save each time as a separate note, but only keep one note per episode.

A quick menu option inside the Audio player screen which will show up a Notes dialog. Any existing notes from that episode will also be listed in the same "Edit text" box. The current playback position will be auto added. I can quickly scribble my thoughts and save. So the note for that episode will get overwritten and saved into db. (The feed title, episode title and episode url are automatically added to the start of the note)

Also a "Notes" screen in the side bar which will show me all the notes from all the episodes. Then, I can export them or copy one episode's note and put them in my main Notes app.

I have implemented and tested this feature. In fact have been personally using it for more than a week. Please let me know if I can submit a pull request, if the idea and UI/UX seems ok to the team. Demo video attached.

Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/3183663/110969363-9d1d6780-837e-11eb-978a-657c45875e9c.mp4

Future TODOs: Hyperlink the time so tapping it can jump to that player position. Ability to delete one or all notes.

[keunes]

@mcaap Thanks for chipping in with your proposal! Great that you have something working already :)

I like it, but personally have a one main reservation: storing timed annotations as single plain text per episode. I get the rationale for having one note per episode. But registering timed notes on an individual level has some great (potential) advantages:

• Individual notes could more easily be deleted (no need to select text) and shared on social media (e.g. podcast title + Episode title + note text + link with time annotation)
• They can be displayed as a nice list, e.g. in an extra tab of the player screen (next to and similar to 'chapters'). The list could be collapsed (show all notes full text) or expanded (show only time & first lines per note, for quick easy scanning).
• As they don't rely on simple text, the time indicators aren't at risk of accidental deletion or mess-up.
• You'd be able to sync them with other instances of AntennaPod or with other apps. Stored as plain text per episode, without structured data, integration with other platforms would be more complicated. I imagine for example integration with feeddirectory.org, where you can choose to share (all or specific) notes with friends or even the world. (cf #4986, CC @stucoates)

They could still be displayed in a grouped manner like you did in the Notes screen, that allows easy copying to a notes app. Do you think recording notes on an individual level would be feasible?

One other thought: In the Notes screen, I think the Podcast title should be displayed above the Episode title. Maybe notes could even be grouped per podcast. If a notes screen gets included, I can already imagine the enhancement requests coming in to sort notes based on episode publish, note creation, and note last edit date :)

[mcaap]

@keunes thanks. Yes, many improvements are possible. But due to my limited time, I just quickly came up with a solution which works for me (for now).

[keunes]

@mcaap Yup, I understand. I'm not a developer, so I'm wondering: say we'd want to have a system with comments/notes recorded individually (which I don't know - what do others think?), would it then make sense to have your solution implemented now, and possibly expand later (incremental)? Or would that have to be (re)done from scratch?

[aksell]

I'd love to try out your current implementation @mcaap . I see you've made a fork for the "notes" feature, but I couldn't find the notes implementation on any of the branches there. If you'd be up for pushing your current implementation to the fork I'll happily try it out / start using it :)

[mcaap]

Hello @aksell changes pushed: https://github.com/mcaap/AntennaPod-with-Notes/commit/eced5e990540d589ff3511dbd550a652f7b43283

[ByteHamster]

The code structure looks pretty nice. Would be great if you (or someone else) had the time to open a pull request to get it into the official app, so everyone can use the feature :)