Frequently Asked Questions

In the DoggCatcher menu, press on 'Application Log'. This will list all of the successes and failures for feed updates and downloads.

Pressing on a row in the list will display the details of the failure.

You can also find the error associated with a specific feed or media file by pressing on the 'details' link on the feed/item exhibiting the problem.

Some users have reported that task killers are killing DC and causing updates/downloads to fail.

Common error messages

Illegal character in hostname at index...: The feed or media files are stored on a server with a hostname that is not allowed by the Android networking software.

Identify the feed URL for the feed in question and paste the feed URL into a browser. This URL is what DoggCatcher will load to display the feed.

Feed description
You should see a description of the feed at the top.

Number of items
If you expect to see a particular item in DoggCatcher but it is missing, verify that it is in the feed. Some feeds only publish items going back so far while some feeds only publish one item.

Audio files
There should be links to audio files next to each item.

If what you see looks like a normal web page without the structure that is described above, it's probably not an RSS URL, but you may be able to locate the RSS URL on that page or close by.

Yes, DoggCatcher supports feeds that require authentication. The feed must support standard http authentication (most do).

DoggCatcher supports feeds in RSS format, which is the most common format used for podcasts.

There are more details here is the RSS url section about how to obtain a feed URL which is how you tell DoggCatcher the 'address' of the podcast.

DoggCatcher does not support Atom or ITunes format, although Atom support will be added in the future.

Some feeds include invalid characters or are in an improper form. This can sometimes cause the feed parser to fail.

You can verify that your feed is in the proper form here - Feed Validator

Some feeds publish items out of order. For these feeds, enabling the 'Always sort' feed option resolves this problem.

This happens when you update a feed, then later when another update occurs, the newly fetched feed is older than the original.

This has happened for me when I update a feed on wifi, then later update over the cell network. Sometimes data is cached (my theory at least) on the carriers proxy servers so you don't get the new version of the feed. You can confirm this is happening to you by opening the feed in the Android browser and you'll probably be seeing the old version of the feed.

During normal usage, one would usually want to listen to older items first. DoggCatcher will download the oldest items that are flagged as 'New', up to the number configured in the 'Auto Download' feed option.

When creating new feeds, all items but the most recent are flagged as old so that the most recent will be the first available.

You can flag any items as 'Done' that you don't want to have downloaded.

DoggCatcher is not able to download media files with the JIT enabled.

Android 2.2 does seem to work fine with a JIT, so it's likely that when your custom ROM becomes based on 2.2, downloads should work fine.

There is a few related post on this topic here - http://www.snoggdoggler.com/node/732

DoggCatcher will only auto-download the media for new items.

Sometimes, feed publishers change the title of the items. By default, DoggCatcher uses the item title to determine uniqueness for an item. So if an item changes its title, DoggCatcher will remove the old item (deleting the media) and add the new item. In this case the media will be downloaded again.

There is a feed option called 'feed identifier' which you can change so that DoggCatcher will use your selected option to uniquely identify items. The value that works for each feed can be different so you may need to try a few to find one that works.

This can also be caused by the filename for the media file being changed. The symptoms for this are the same.

You can add a YouTube many different types of feed from YouTube. To add a YouTube feed, add a feed as RSS URL. You can learn about how to create YouTube urls here.

Some feeds only keep a certain number of items published.

The first thing to do is to check what items are available in the feed by pasting the feed URL into a browser. Try to find the item that you are looking for.

If it's not there, then the publisher has removed that item from the feed.

If it is there but it is not available in DoggCatcher, let me know and I'll look into it.

This seems to happen sometimes with the Android Media Player in Android 2.2. Starting and stopping the audio file has been reported to correct it.

Most audio files are supported by Android, however occasionally there are incompatibilities with some audio encoding parameters used by podcast publishers.

The easiest way to determine if there is a problem with the audio file is to long press on the media file and 'launch in external player'. This will load the media file and the Android music player. If it fails to play, then the audio file is not compatible with Android.

In the past, it has been useful to contact the publisher and let them know. They will often try to correct the problem.

There are a few different things that can be happening here.

App Exit - If the app is exited while an item is paused, it will resume somewhere between 0 and 30 seconds prior to where it was paused. I have an open issue to fix this - http://mantis.snoggdoggler.com/view.php?id=546

Android 2.2 and some podcasts - There are some podcasts that don't play properly on Android 2.2. Their current position increments by 1/2 second for each second of time that passes. When DC remembers the current position, so it can resume later, the incorrect position is remembered. And it resumes half way between where it was paused last and where you listened to.

You can see this by watching the current position (left of the seekbar) while the audio is playing. If the time is changing very slowly...then that's it.

As long as you keep the same media file in the media player and don't exit the app, this won't be a problem.

At this point, I don't have a solution for the situation where the app is exited or you switch from one media file to one with the problem and try to resume it. If I become aware of one, I'll quickly get it fixed.

I see this problem on both a 2.2 emulator and a real 2.2 device plus some of the reports from users were droids on 2.2.

Here's the one feed I noticed this with:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/androidguys.rss

If you notice any more, please let me know.

There are some apps in the Google Market that acquire exclusive binding to the media buttons (as of this post). While those apps are installed, no other apps will be able to receive buttons events. If your buttons stopped working around the time you installed a media application, it's likely to be the cause.

Not at the moment. There have been numerous requests for this and I would love to add it, however the Android media player does not currently support altering playback speed. Once this becomes possible, I will add the feature to DoggCatcher. Here's a related discussion on the topic.

Starting with Android 2.2, how applications bind to the wired headset and bluetooth devices has changed.

What should be happening (2.2+) is that when an application is used, it will register to become the 'preferred' application for the button presses and then receive the button events.

In order to get DoggCatcher to bind to the buttons, you should connect your headset, start the application, and press the play button in the application. From that point on DoggCatcher will become the 'preferred' application and will respond to the button presses.

To get another application to bind to the buttons, start the other application and press play. If the other application registers as the 'preferred' application, then it will respond to the buttons from that point forward.

The coding details can be found here - http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/06/allowing-applications-to-...

Yes, DoggCatcher can stream audio. The media player engine was changed in Android 2.2, so there are subtle differences in behavior. The differences are outlined below.

Notes

• There are a few mentions of a 'while' above. Android 2.2 introduced some period of time while a stream is buffering that we can't get any progress on but we do know when it's finished...so this is a while.
• Switching from one media stream to another can cause DC to display "application not responding", press wait, it just takes some time.
• When stream fails while playing, it's not possible to detect an error. It behaves like a normal play completion. This can cause unintended flagging as items as complete.

The first step is to determine if the video can be played by your device. Try launching the video in the Android video player. You can do this by temporarily setting your video player DoggCatcher preference to external and then try to play the video again. If it still fails, then the video isn't able to be played on your device.

Feed publishers sometimes change encoding parameters that cause the video to fail to play on Android. In the past, users have contacted the publishers and they have corrected the encoding to make the videos compatible with Android.

If the video can be played in the Android player but fails to play in the DoggCatcher integrated player, please post in the support forum and I'll check it out.

DoggCatcher supports the video formats supported by your device and Android version, which can vary. Please consult the Android video formats for details.

DoggCatcher is able to play video files in the formats that are supported by your Android version and/or device. If you see this message, then the video you are trying to play is not supported by your version of Android and/or device.

This can be verified by opening the Android gallery application and playing the video from there. If you see the same error message, then most likely, the video is not supported.

This can happen in the following circumstances:

Order authorization has failed
Please login to your Google checkout account and verify that the credit authorization has been accepted.

Order is in 'Customer review in progress' status
It seems that the order is getting flagged for investigation as potentially fraudulent order. Here's Google's description of this issue - Fraud protection. This document states that this is normally resolved in 4-6 hrs so I would suggest trying to re-download again after that period or contacting Google to get the order processed.

If you have purchased the app and are having this problem, you can create an account here and email me the username. I can give you access to download the app from this site.

Developers don't have the ability to manage Google accounts (or move licenses from one account to another). I would suggest contacting Google or your carrier to see if they can help. If they are unable to assist, place a new order and email both the old and new order number indicating which one is which. I will cancel the older order.

Developers don't have the ability to manage Google accounts. I would suggest contacting Google or your carrier to see if they can help. If they are unable to assist, place a new order and email both the old and new order number indicating which one is which. I will cancel the older order.

This is an issue with the market application that happens for some users. Strange as it may be, sometimes a reboot fixes it and sometimes waiting fixes it. In every case I have heard of, it does resolve itself. If you have purchased the app and are having this problem, you can create an account here and email me the username. I can give you access to download the app from this site.

Yes, follow these steps:

• Backup your DoggCatcher configuration by doing a Backup in the DoggCatcher menu
• If you are changing phones, move the DoggCatcher directory from the old phone's sd card (in /sdcard) to the same location on the new phone.
• Re-download DoggCatcher from the Google Market app (in the downloads section)
• Restore your DoggCatcher configuration to the new phone by doing a Restore in the DoggCatcher menu

The ability to download the application from the Google Market is dependent on moving your google account from the old phone to the new phone.

Android sometimes tells applications running in the background to stop, when applications in the foreground require more resources. The intensity with which DoggCatcher will try to remain in memory can be configured with the keep-alive preference.

Some Podcast feeds include characters that are not supported by the XML parser built into Android. We replace those characters with "?".

DoggCatcher uses the external storage to store images and episodes. When your phone is mounted as a USB drive, DoggCatcher can't see the external storage.

Install the log collector application called 'aLogCat' from the Google Market and email the log file to support at snoggdoggler.com.

Users have reported that rebooting the phone or re-installing the application fixes this.

To backup the database, please follow these steps.

1 - In the DC menu, choose backup, then press the backup button
2 - Grab these files from the SD card and email them to me at support at snoggdoggler.com
\DoggCatcher\Export\databases\rss
\DoggCatcher\Export\shared_prefs\DOGG_CATCHER_PREFERENCES.XML
\DoggCatcher\Export\shared_prefs\_preferences.xml

On some devices, when an application is updated, the widget does not update it's graphics to match the new version of the application.

You can resolve this either by removing and re-adding the widget or by rebooting the phone.