Welcome to QCast, an accessible, full-featured podcast player and manager for your desktop. With QCast, you can subscribe to individual podcasts or import a list of subscriptions from any other pod-catching software you use. Stream episodes directly, or download them and listen at your leisure. Rewind or fast forward incrementally, jump to specific time markers, and adjust your playback speed to get the most out of your listening experience. QCast is intelligent. It remembers where you left off in each episode, and resumes playback from that point the next time you play it. This ReadMe covers everything you will need to know about QCast.
When you open QCast, you begin in a window with two lists and an edit field. At first, you will be focused on the list of podcasts. The list shows the title of each podcast and the date the podcast was last updated. Pressing tab will move you to the list of episodes for the selected podcast. The episode list shows the episode title, the date it was published, and the status of the episode, including whether the episode was downloaded and how much of the episode has been played. Pressing tab again will bring you to the episode's description field, where you can read any show notes for the episode currently focused in the episode list.
In the menu bar, the podcast menu contains options for managing the podcast list, while the episode menu contains actions you can take on the selected episode.
To add a podcast, press ctrl+p or select "add podcast" from the podcast menu. You will be focused on an edit box where you can type or paste the address of the podcast's rss feed. This address should be listed on the website for the podcast. Press the "check URL" button to have QCast check the feed. This insures that the address is correct, and displays some information about the podcast. Read the podcast title and description that are displayed to insure you entered the correct URL. If everything looks good, press the "Add!" button. You will be returned to the main window with your newly-added podcast at the bottom of the list of feeds.
To remove a podcast from the list, simply select the podcast in the main window and press the delete key or choose "delete podcast" from the podcast menu.
From within QCast you can search the iTunes podcast directory to find new podcasts you might enjoy. Select the Search for Podcasts item from the Podcast menu, fill in a search term, click search, wait for the list of results to populate, select one, and tab to and press the Add button. When you are done searching for podcasts, press the Close button to be returned to the main window.
You can view some information about the selected podcast by pressing ctrl+d or choosing "podcast details" from the podcast menu. This shows the podcast title, the description, and the URL of the RSS feed. Press the close button to return to the main window. For even more information about the selected podcast,QCast can take you directly to the podcast's web site in your default browser. press ctrl+w or select "browse podcast website" from the podcast menu.
If you want to get information on a specific episode before playing it, select the episode from the list and type CTRL Shift D. This will bring up a dialog giving the title, description and length of the episode, as well as "play" and "close" buttons.
To update the list of episodes in the current podcast, press ctrl+n, or select "check for new episodes" from the podcast menu. This will add any newly released episodes to the episode list.
QCast can import a list of podcast subscriptions from other podcast software. It can also export your current list into a file format that other podcast clients can recognize for importing. The standard format used by most podcast subscription lists is OPML. Any client that can read or write this format can work with QCast. This includes desktop software like iTunes or Juice Receiver, along with mobile applications such as iCatcher or Downcast. The following sections describe how to get an opml file from some common applications, and how to bring your subscriptions from QCast into those applications.
To import an OPML file, select "import" from the podcast menu, and select the desired OPML file. To export your list, select "export" from the podcast menu and choose where to place the newly generated file.
To export your podcast list from iTunes, follow these steps:
To import a list from QCast into iTunes, do the following:
To export your podcast list from Juice Receiver, select "Export feeds as opml" from the file menu, and select where to save the file. You can then import it to QCast as described earlier.
To import a list from QCast to Juice Receiver, select "import feeds from opml" from the file menu, and select the file that you exported from QCast as previously described.
To export your podcast list from downcast, do the following:
To import a list from QCast to downcast, or most other iOS podcast apps, follow these steps:
To view a list of episodes available in the current podcast, select a podcast and press tab to focus on the episode list. With QCast, you can either stream podcast episodes over the internet, or download them to play later. To download the selected episode, press ctrl+l, or select "download" from the episode menu. The episode status in the list will change to show that the download is in progress. To play the selected episode, press enter or select play from the episode menu. The episode will begin playing, and the playback window will open.
While playing a podcast, the playback window gives you several options, as follows. Each item in this window has a hotkey which will move you directly to that item.
If you particularly enjoy an episode you're listening to, you can easily share it with your friends! To share it on Twitter in a way that most accessible Twitter clients can play, click the Share button in the playback dialog. Select Twitter from the list which appears. A dialog will come up prefilled with some text. IF you're satisfied with the text, click the send button. If this is your first time posting to Twitter, you will be prompted to log in. Once you have done so, your tweet will be sent. To e-mail the episode to a friend, go into the Episode menu and select Email episode, or press ctrl+e (command+e on Mac), fill in their address, and your e-mail client will come up with the message preentered. Customize it if you like and press send to share the awesome thing you're currently listening to.
Portable mode allows you to run QCast from any folder on your computer: Dropbox, USB storage devices, and more. If you have purchased QCast, you will be required to perform a one-time product activation on every new computer you use the application on. Your settings and other information will be preserved between portable runs of the application and saved in the folder user_data inside the application's folder.
QCast has an automatic update feature. It will check for a newer version every time it is started, as well as every 2 hours. To disable the automatic update feature, add --disable-autoupdate to the application command line. Note: this flag does not work with beta versions of QCast.