The preview apps for syncing WP8 are so useless when it comes to podcasts that people are actually suggesting using iTunes to sync podcasts! Excuse me, I think I'm getting physically ill.
But, there does appear to be an alternative--adding podcasts directly to the phone file system! However, it doesn't appear to work.
I am asking, in general, for some help in manually adding podcasts via the file system.
What I know follows. Any help filling in the details may result in a solution.
Looking at the phone file system, you can see that there are a couple podcast-related folders that are kept under Music
Digging down into the podcasts folder, you can see subfolders that hold podcast files
You can't copy these files to the local machine, and they appear to hold a much smaller subset of your normal metadata, most of which is invalid. You cannot copy these from the phone.
In addition, in the PodcastSeries folder holds these odd .ser 0-length files with the same name as the podcast folder. They can't be renamed, but they can be copied to the desktop.
So, with this information, I have tried the following:
1) Add mp3 files with their Genre set to "Podcast" (as you would have to do on WP7) as music via the desktop app. This did not work, as the files showed up as Music.
2) Added a directory to the Podcasts directory on the phone called "MyPodcasts" and filled it with .mp3 files (Genre = "Podcast"). This did not work. The podcast files did not show up under Podcasts, nor under Music.
3) Added a .ser file in PodcastSeries with the name "MyPodcasts.ser". Created a new (empty) text file (right-click, new, Text document, then renamed--yes, I made sure it was not "MyPodcasts.ser.txt"), then dropped that in PodcastSeries. This did not work. Tried the same thing by copying a .ser file to my desktop, renaming it "MyPodcasts.ser", then dropping it back into PodcastSeries. This also did not work.
I refuse to install iTunes.
