Subscribing to RSS video feeds with UbuStream v2.2

[ubu]

One of the new features in UbuStream v2.2 is the ability to subscribe to syndicated video/audio content via RSS feeds, including iTunes ones. Some guidelines (and disclaimers) are perhaps in order.

You can subscribe to pretty much any RSS feed that contains media file enclosures. Currently, standard RSS 2.0 feeds are supported, including those with ITunes and Media extensions. Not supported yet are feeds that contain links to web pages with embedded video (an embedded Flash player, for instance) or to BitTorrent torrent files. I'm planning to add support for these variants in a subsequent release.

I've included some sample RSS video feeds as part of the UbuStream v2.2 beta, so you can get a feel for how it works. You can subscribe to new feeds by simply pasting the feed URL into the Rss Feed panel of the UbuStream config app. You can choose between playing the media enclosures as streams or downloading them to disk and playing them as media files. (Most vodcasts and podcasts are downloadable, for instance).

If you encounter a "problem" feed, please let me know and I'll try to resolve the problem for you. One reason for v2.2 having "beta" status is that I'd like to resolve as many issues with this feature as possible before making it the "official" release. The underlying RSS engine for this feature is provided by the Argotic Syndication Framework so, if the problem is with their code, I'll work with them to resolve it.

Video content delivery via RSS has been really taking off recently and, IMHO, will become one of the preferred ways to provide content to home media software and HTPCs.

[David]

Ubu,

One of the features that I like in UbuStream is the ability to turn network streams into channels. I access GB-PVR through EWA almost exclusively. Is this also supported in the RSS enhancement?

[ubu]

Ubu,

One of the features that I like in UbuStream is the ability to turn network streams into channels. I access GB-PVR through EWA almost exclusively. Is this also supported in the RSS enhancement?

Hi David,

You should be able to use EWA to access the stations created by the RSS feed feature in the same way you access any UbuStream station. Since EWA uses VLC for playback, the usual restrictions apply (if VLC can't handle the stream format, for whatever reason, that particular stream won't work).

When an Rss feed is read by UbuStream, it creates a group with the name of the feed and then, for each item in the feed, creates a station. The media format of the station is determined by the type of enclosure in the feed. Popular video formats are mp4, m4v, wmv, flv, avi and, for audio, mp3. VLC can play the majority of these streams.

If you choose to use the "download to file" option, I'd imagine you'd get smoother playback with EWA since you'd be using less network bandwidth. (ie. When playing a stream, your gbpvr system is both receiving the stream from the web site and streaming it to your EWA client at the same time. If it's playing a file, it's just dong the EWA streaming part.) It's also possible that, for some enclosures, VLC will successfully play the file where it has problems playing the stream.

I don't use EWA myself, so this is all a bit hypothetical. :o Please let me know if you hit EWA-specific problems using the new RSS feature and I'll try to resolve them.