nnrss and podcasts

nnrss and podcasts

[Steinar Bang]

Just to see what happened I went to http://nrk.no/podcast and
subscribed to a podcast, to see what the results looked like.

The results were actually pretty promising.  I got a readable summary
buffer, and the articles had a readable description, followed by a
clickable URL.  I clicked the URL, and unsurprisingly Opera asked me
of it should download or Open the file.  I clicked on "Open" for a
change.  Then Opera downloaded the file, and once more asked me if I
should Open it.  I clicked on "OK", and it opened and started playing
the MP3 file in Noatun (this is on KDE).

So for playback on my laptop, I guess Gnus would do as a client.  It
could be a bit smoother.  Ie. skip Opera alltogether and just download
the MP3 and send it directly to a sound player.  Does anyone else have
experiences with this?

Also for managing an MP3 player, ie. syncing new files over, deleting
old and played files, I guess there's quite a few pieces missing.  Has
anyone thought about implementing something in emacs lisp?

Thanx!


- Steinar

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

> So for playback on my laptop, I guess Gnus would do as a client.  It
> could be a bit smoother.  Ie. skip Opera alltogether and just download
> the MP3 and send it directly to a sound player.  Does anyone else have
> experiences with this?

Perhaps sending the URL to xmms would be the most convenient?

> Also for managing an MP3 player, ie. syncing new files over, deleting
> old and played files, I guess there's quite a few pieces missing.  Has
> anyone thought about implementing something in emacs lisp?

Well, I've implemented an mp3 player in Emacs (which is playing right
this second), but I think that has rather limited interest...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>> So for playback on my laptop, I guess Gnus would do as a client.
>> It could be a bit smoother.  Ie. skip Opera alltogether and just
>> download the MP3 and send it directly to a sound player.  Does
>> anyone else have experiences with this?

> Perhaps sending the URL to xmms would be the most convenient?

Perhaps.  Saving it to a local file, and sending that file to xmms
would be even better, because that would allow pausing and resuming
the playback.

>> Also for managing an MP3 player, ie. syncing new files over,
>> deleting old and played files, I guess there's quite a few pieces
>> missing.  Has anyone thought about implementing something in emacs
>> lisp?

> Well, I've implemented an mp3 player in Emacs (which is playing
> right this second), but I think that has rather limited interest...

What I'm suggesting is different.  It isn't playback as such.

I'm thinking about something to do the housekeeping about what I've
downloaded, and what I've played, so that when new podcasts appear,
they are downloaded to a local disk, and that will (optionally) delete
them when they have been played.

Ie. something similar to what iTunes does for me (which I'm not
satisfied with, btw.  iTunes is too inflexible: I can only select a
single deletion strategy for all podcasts, not a different one for
each podcast.  And it keeps synching the podcasts to all iPods even
though I've told it not to).

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

> Perhaps.  Saving it to a local file, and sending that file to xmms
> would be even better, because that would allow pausing and resuming
> the playback.

It might take some time to download the file first, though.

> I'm thinking about something to do the housekeeping about what I've
> downloaded, and what I've played, so that when new podcasts appear,
> they are downloaded to a local disk, and that will (optionally) delete
> them when they have been played.

So nnrss would automatically pre-download the podcasts?  Well, that
would make sense.  A kind of cache mechanism on top of nnrss...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> So nnrss would automatically pre-download the podcasts?  Well, that
> would make sense.  A kind of cache mechanism on top of nnrss...

The cache is one thing.  More important is the housekeeping.

What I need to figure out is if there is a standard for recording the
number of times a particular file has been played (that's how the iPod
builds its "25 most played" list and how it, and iTunes, keeps track
of which podcasts it can delete (I've set it up to delete the podcasts
once I've listened to them).

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

> What I need to figure out is if there is a standard for recording
> the number of times a particular file has been played (that's how
> the iPod builds its "25 most played" list and how it, and iTunes,
> keeps track of which podcasts it can delete (I've set it up to
> delete the podcasts once I've listened to them).

Here's a plugin for xmms that among other things, records the number
of times a file has been played
	https://sourceforge.net/projects/xmmsvotelist/
Not much information there about file formats and such, though.

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

>> What I need to figure out is if there is a standard for recording
>> the number of times a particular file has been played (that's how
>> the iPod builds its "25 most played" list and how it, and iTunes,
>> keeps track of which podcasts it can delete (I've set it up to
>> delete the podcasts once I've listened to them).

Here's something about the iTunes Music Library File Format
	http://search.cpan.org/~bdfoy/Mac-iTunes-0.85/doc/file_format.pod
	http://homepage.ntlworld.com/simon.mason20/ipod_tunes_spec.htm

Hm... thinking some more, the iTunes file format would of course be
totally irrelevant to a Gnus/Emacs based podcast housekeeping system.
That system would maintain its data in a lisp file (like the nnrss
backend does).

But it needs to get feedback from the player that when it has
completely played the track.  Is that possible with xmms?  Is that
possible with other players?

Re: nnrss and podcasts

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

> Just to see what happened I went to http://nrk.no/podcast and
> subscribed to a podcast, to see what the results looked like.
[snip!]
> So for playback on my laptop, I guess Gnus would do as a client.  It
> could be a bit smoother.  Ie. skip Opera alltogether and just download
> the MP3 and send it directly to a sound player.  Does anyone else have
> experiences with this?

> Also for managing an MP3 player, ie. syncing new files over, deleting
> old and played files, I guess there's quite a few pieces missing.  Has
> anyone thought about implementing something in emacs lisp?

Indeed they have.  Released approximately 18 months after the above
posting: 
	http://www.gnu.org/software/emms/

Of course, in the meantime I've used AmaroK (until it became too large
and slow, and the podcast behaviour too unpredictable), and then
rhythmbox, to download and play the podcasts I listen to.

So I don't really need to use nnrss for podcasts anymore.  But emms
looked interesting, even so.

(It's downloadable by ELPA, http://tromey.com/elpa/ which is how I
discovered it)