PodTrapper Playback Screen

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Screen Information

The screens for playing back podcast episodes and files on your device are very similar.

At the top of this screen you'll see the progress bar for the media, and clicking on this will play/pause the media (no need to scroll to the play/pause button).

Below that are buttons that control playback. There are also Keyboard Shortcuts for most of these controls. Here are the time frames that will be skipped by the fast forward and rewind buttons:

<<< Skip back 30 seconds << Skip back 5 seconds >> Skip forward 30 seconds >>> Skip forward 1/40th of the file length

Why are they different between forward and backwards? Well, it makes it more useful this way. Going backwards you generally want to hear something you missed, or similar, so short periods are more useful. Going forward, though, you may want to skip large sections of the podcast, so bigger skips make sense. If you do need to skip back far, it's easiest to skip to the beginning and go forward.

Below the play controls are details about this item, be it a file or podcast episode. For episodes you'll see things like the episode description, date of publish, download status, etc.


Menu Items

  • Common Menu Items
  • Add to playlist: Adds this item to the Playlist
  • Play in BBMP: This will send this file to the built in BlackBerry media player for playback. This is handy if you want to use Bluetooth controls (which RIM forbids 3rd party developers from accessing). It also helps in testing whether there's a problem with PodTrapper with respect to a media file, or if it's the BB itself.
  • Restart playback: This is the same as hitting the |< playback control
  • [re]Download episode: (Episode view only) Allows you to download an episode if it wasn't previously marked for download, or redownload it in the event of corruption (which occasionally happens when downloading over the cell network)
  • View Download Log: Allows you to view the log of an episodes download, to see if/why it's having trouble downloading (advanced users)
  • Select output: Allows you to select from the various output mechanisms for playback (speakerphone, headphones, bluetooth, etc). See note below.

Note About Output Methods

With the version of the BlackBerry OS that PodTrapper targets (4.2.1) it's not possible to see which output methods are actually available at any given time, or even which output method is in use. The 'Auto' setting tells PodTrapper not to touch the settings at all, and let the BB OS manage the output method. This should be fine in most cases, but occasionally you'll want to override this. (For example, the BB OS will never automatically switch to a monoural bluetooth headset). Note, though, that when overridden, no more automatic switching will happen (when you plug in headsets and such), until you revert to the 'Auto' setting. So, it's best to manually set this only while you want it to go to that output method specifically, then reset it to 'Auto' when done. Note that changing back to 'Auto' will only take affect for the next file played.

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