My current understanding is that Chapter Stops can't be added to an .mp3 and we would have to go with an .AAC or .m4B extension to enable that feature. We
could do that (and I would love to, and add in different art to display during different chapters, too) but that approach would probably inconvenience a lot of people who don't use iPods to listen to the cast. We may sound this out and implement it at some point though as I would greatly prefer the flexibility in terms of episode navigation, too.
We can add timestamps to the cast and we have it set up to do that so that those timestamps are shown in the "display lyrics" option in iPhones and the iPod touch. That was our cunning plan to address this issue as it has been raised before. We
didn't do that in this episode - so let me explain why, in a fullsome way, that didn't happen on this Episode of the podcast (or in Episode #011, either - both times for the same reason):
In a phrase: We were LATE.
Epic lateness in the release of the podcast. It had been over six weeks since we released Episode #011 and we were feeling the heat, big time.
Our intention with
Chronicles was initially to release a new episiode about every two weeks and we kept up with that intention for the first six episodes or so. Gencon threw us off the rails for a bit, but we adjusted and got back on track.
Gencon did something else that we hadn't planned on though. The Gencon Paizo seminar specials
tripled our listening audience for the podcast, almost overnight. And that new audience had a lot to say about what they liked -- and about what they didn't like. They weren't shy about saying it, either.
So after Episode #05, we tried to change and add more features to the cast. This increased the length of the podcast greatly -- and it was already a long podcast. This is not a small point, because we also do something with the podcast that VERY few other gaming podcasts do: we edit every second of the podcast, often thrice.
We remove intakes of breath, most of the uhms and ahhs, pauses -- integrate retakes -- and get rid of extraneous comments and questions that don't fit. It's a LOT of work in post-production. A crap load of work.
All of this post-production makes for a smoother listening experience but adds greatly to the length of time it takes to make an episode. For a four hour podcast episode, we spend about 30-40 hours in total to create it.
Compare that to a weekly or bi-weekly podcast like the
Order 66 podcast.
Order 66 has a length of about two hours. They record in one take -- add the drops to the podcast live on the air -- encode to .mp3 after they stop boadcasting and Dave uploads it. While Chris spends a fair bit of time writing some of their segments, in terms of recording and post? It's a two to three hour affair, per episode.
That's why they can do a weekly or bi-weekly cast and keep up with the schedule, more or less.
In contrast, we are spending about 10 hours recording, 10 hours writing and another 20 hours in post to get to four hours+ per episode with 8 distinct segments in each episode.
And by "we" I mean principally Azmyth. He's the guy who does all of the post-production edits, drops and the unique intro mashup for each episode. While I spend the greatest time on writing content for the show, reading the content to be reviewed, and in organizing our segments / interviews, Azmyth is the guy who makes it all work in post-production. No Azmyth? No podcast. Simple as that.
So, there we are trying to get all of this done and mixed down on Sunday night and Az's software does another hickup. It says the file is too large (it isn't - but his software won't budge in its B.S. error warning) and refuses to mix-down. Azmyth, Merry and I are on Skype on Sunday night as this is happening and Az has promised on our forums that the new episode will be up..STAT. Listeners are hitting refresh and I can see all this in real-time. And the frikkin podcast won't mix-down.
Az sends the files to Merry -- and that takes 10 minutes and then Merry mixes it all down on his machine (different software) and it works. YAY! Merry resends the full .mp3 back to Az so Az can add the tags, artwork and timestamps and upload it to archive.org....except the upload back to Az takes for freakin EVER. And it's refresh city on our forums and it's getting to the wee hours of the morning, too.
It's now 1:45 a.m. EST. Az has been working on editing the show literally for 13 hours that day and he's exhausted. I'm prepping the upload posts to the various website and waiting for the download link to add to them. I've got the XML for iTunes open and ready to go which I insist on doing myself as that way, I won't have anybody to blame but ME when it doesn't work (iTunes is one finnicky bitch.)
So it's a great big damn RUSH and we all have to go to bed to get up and go to work the next day (well, later the same day, by that point).
End Result: That's why we didn't take the time to go through the mixed down podcast and get the timestamps to put in the cast --
even though we meant to.
If we can clean that up and add them in and reupload the episode tomorrow, we will. I know that it can be frustrating to navigate the podcast without those time stamps, especially if you are listening on something other than an iPhone or iPod Touch (which each have a superior mp3 navigation interface within long files).
I wish there was an eaiser way to do all of this and it may be that going to an .AAC format would make some sense. I have visions of 800 listeners sending me mail and unsubscribing from the podcast after we make such a change though -- so I'm not sure how best to address this.
Thanks for the comments though Soth. I promise -
we'll do better next time. 
