Create resumable podcast downloads

May 25, '06 07:30:05AM

Contributed by: ajfarmosx

Being a dialup only user, I've been very frustrated with iTunes' lack of a resumable download for podcasts, etc. My attempts at downloading with Firefox from sites such as MacObserver(MacGeekGab) was poor, since Firefox would often find the connection closed after the download was partly downloaded. (This is the same thing I'd see in iTunes, where I would never know what had happened, except that the file size was way too small.)

I'm sure there are shareware-type downloaders out there that would work, but money doesn't grow on trees for a lot of us folks. So I use the built-in curl command in Terminal. Trying curl in Terminal using the options -C - -O will work for most sites. However, for sites (like MacObserver) that are using a service such as CacheFly which uses redirects, it won't work. I was stumped until I contacted CacheFly, and they pointed out that "you can have curl follow redirects by passing it the -L flag."

I had read the help for curl, but did not understand what Follow Location: hints (H) meant. Finally! Now I can grab the podcast URL from the website, and then run this command in Terminal:

curl -L -C - -O http://url.of.podcast
Even if the connection gets killed before I've finished downloading (hours later), I can resume and finish it. I hope this helps at least one other dialup user out there. Hopefully Apple will eventually connect iTunes with tools like curl that ship with OS X to upgrade their download capabilities.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060522155056531