Topic: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Hi All,

I'm really enjoying the recent beta's -- They are starting to show the potential of a chumby.  Now one of my original ideas was that I could use a chumby as a podcast listening device.  yes I know there is a podcast channel available but you don't really get to pick what you want beyond very 'broad' categories.

What I really want is a way to convert a RSS feed to a playlist and then point my chumby at that.  As an experiment I whipped up a (very) simple script that does exactly this for podcasts on the TWIT network (http://loghound.com/playlist.php) and it works great but I'd really like to find some more generic solution that doesn't require me writing custom code.

I did find feedmorf (http://feedmorf.com/) which looked promising and advertised it could do exactly this but it was totally broken.  Anyone else have ideas on how to create our own 'podcasting' playlists?

-John

2 (edited by shoe 2008-01-12 10:50:12)

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Hi John,

Actually, you can point Mediafly on the Chumby to your own feeds, or put on different feeds in different categories.

Here's how:

http://mediafly.typepad.com/cvconant_te … e-the.html

The instructions are from the CEO of Mediafly....

shoe

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

shoe wrote:

Hi John,

Actually, you can point Mediafly on the Chumby to your own feeds, or put on different feeds in different categories.

Here's how:

http://mediafly.typepad.com/cvconant_te … e-the.html

The instructions are from the CEO of Mediafly....

shoe

Hi Shoe,

Well, that looks to be exactly what I want so thanks for the pointer -- I played around with Media Fly a bit today and while I can get my chumby to pick up a custom feed (which is awesome) but I'm finding mediafly a little clunky.  I created a channel which picked up the default "Unclassified" name and now I can't figure out how to rename it.  I also can't figure out how to add custom RSS feeds to mediafly (it only seems to want to add podcasts it has in it's catalog) but perhaps I'm not understanding how to use it properly so I'll play with it more.

Again, thanks for the poiter.....
-John

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Hi John...

From what I can tell, you can't change channel names... But if you click the bottom link... Add Link to Mediafly... takes you here: http://www.mediafly.com/AddFeeds.aspx

You can enter the RSS feed of the podcast, and it should automagically subscribe you... I've only done it once, but it seemed to work....

It seems to put things in its own channels though, depending on how the feed is tagged by the feed owner. You can add tags, but it doesn't seem to change the way things are classified.

shoe

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Hi John -

We are in the process of drastically improving the My Mediafly page to make it more user friendly. It will look more like gmail -- obvious, user-friendly.  But in the mean time, the way to change a channel is to go to the Feed page and click the "Change Channel" option on the left side and create new channel. Then you can move any feeds into that channel. (we'll make this easier in Feb).

If you have a personalized feed you can just add it like any other feed using the Add Feed link at the bottom. However, I don't recommend this method b/c it will just jumble them all together.  My suggestion is to add the feeds that you like into Mediafly seperately so that you can use the advanced features that we are adding to dictate which episodes from which feeds should be delivered.

For example, one "selection preference" that is nice is the Smart Days vs. Calendar Days ability. So, if you listen to CNN which comes out hourly you can select: One episode in the last 1 calendar day. That way you don't get old news. But for Stand Up Comedy feeds you might say: Three episodes over any time.

This is one of the areas we are doing very innovative things.  And we have a few more very cool preferences coming out in the next couple months.

I am happy to help in any way I can. You can email me via www.mediafly.com/contactus . And, any features/ideas you have to improve Mediafly, send them over. We take this input very seriously and are building most into the future versions.

Best,

Carson
President
Mediafly

Carson Conant
President, Mediafly

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

I added custom feeds thru the mediafly website. However, most of my feeds are not working. It loads the episodes one by one but never plays. Here is the RSS feed:http://www.podbazaar.com/rss/126100789566373912
Thanks
Muks

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Hmmm, it appears that btplay is having trouble playing those streams.

I think these have the same symptom as another problem we encountered regarding some servers doing some weird HTTP stuff, and for which we already have a fix for a future firmware update.  We'll have QA try these streams as part of their testing.

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Ok, Thanks

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Most of my podcasts work, however, this http://www.podbazaar.com/rss/126100789566374044 still doesnt work.It loads and shows it as "idle"
Does it support video podcasts?

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

muks wrote:

Most of my podcasts work, however, this http://www.podbazaar.com/rss/126100789566374044 still doesnt work.It loads and shows it as "idle"

After your previous post, I forwarded the link to the upstream developer, but I'm not sure what happened after that.  I'll see if I can followup sometime next week.

Does it support video podcasts?

No, not at the moment.

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

Thanks!

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

I've got a PHP Script that does just this. Unfortunately my hosting site does not allow the downloading of webpages, even RSS feeds, so I'm out of luck on that score. I have a half finished version in Python as well, but just need to figure a way of running it every x hours. I originally wanted to feed the URL to MyStream, but it doesn't seem to like a PHP extension, even though the result is a valid PLS file, which I've verified by playing the resulting file. I posted a message over in Software, but haven't had anyone reply yet.  Colin

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

You can use cron to run a script on a time schedule if you have a good enough web host. I use Dreamhost and they let you do this.

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

I already have a cron and simplepie based rss/php reader that I use with my chumby.

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=1734

Re: How to convert a podcast RSS feed to a playlist?

shoe wrote:

Hi John,

Actually, you can point Mediafly on the Chumby to your own feeds, or put on different feeds in different categories.

Here's how:

http://mediafly.typepad.com/cvconant_te … e-the.html

The instructions are from the CEO of Mediafly....

shoe

Thank you, Shoe.
I was unable to find ANYTHING about the Chumby on the mediafly website. The link you posted was perfect. Is this something that can go in the Wiki?