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    • podcasts/audio blogs?

    Posted by Elizabeth Dalton posts: 38 United States

    Hi all,

    I searched tw.org on both "podcasts" and "audio" and found a few hits, but nothing all that helpful. I'm looking for a way to let instructors at our university upload audio files and let students subscribe to the RSS feed using a podcatch tool such as iTunes. I created a test file gallery and uploaded a couple of sample audio files, then tried subscribing to the feeds a couple of different ways. Thunderbird handled the audio feed fine (once I enabled anonymous download of files), but iTunes can't parse the feed. Next I tried going through FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) using their "smartfeed" option, to see if the media files would be acceptably enclosed. iTunes still can't parse the feed. It seems to get directed straight through to the Tiki feed.

    Does anyone have a working setup for this? Thunderbird is fine as far as I'm concerned, but I know some folks think it's just not podcasting unless you can automate having the audio files loaded onto your mp3 player, and if we can't use iTunes, I think we're missing a big chunk of the potential audience.

    Thanks,

    e. dalton

    Reads: 2254
    Posted by Damian Parker posts: 2881 United Kingdom

    > and if we can't use iTunes, I think we're missing a big chunk of the potential audience.
    >

    bah use gtkpod 😊

    anyway, nothing at the moment exists within TikiWiki for podcasting. Myself and coloweb have put together some sample code and specifications, but we no-one have the resources to continue the podcasting development within TikiWiki.

    The Jukebox pages should provide the insight, i think we get them pretty upto date.

    Cheers

    Damian

    Posted by Elizabeth Dalton posts: 38 United States

    > > and if we can't use iTunes, I think we're missing a big chunk of the potential audience.
    > >
    >
    > bah use gtkpod 😊
    >
    > anyway, nothing at the moment exists within TikiWiki for podcasting. Myself and coloweb have put together some sample code and specifications, but we no-one have the resources to continue the podcasting development within TikiWiki.
    >
    > The Jukebox pages should provide the insight, i think we get them pretty upto date.
    >
    > Cheers
    >
    > Damian
    >

    The Jukebox functionality seems to be more for streaming or shoutcasting. I think the MFOLDER page has some of the right ideas, but MFOLDER itself is just a display mod; it doesn't generate an RSS feed (and doesn't seem to have an upload feature, either).

    As I posted a moment ago, I guess I'll just have to learn PHP. 😉

    e.dalton

    Posted by Elizabeth Dalton posts: 38 United States

    Just thought I'd let people know I'm still working on this. I've got as far as creating appropriately tagged feeds out of any rss feed that handles files (I test with filegals), but so far the feed still hands out a redirect url to the file, which iTunes doesn't like; I need to fix this so the actual file location is given. This will restrict podcast use to cases where media are stored as files rather than in the database, of course, but that is likely desirable anyway.

    I also need to add the ability to attach files to blog entries, so the podcasting can be done out of blogs. But right now I'm bogged down in the last week of teaching a stats class online, so it will be a while before I can finish this up. I could use some help testing the resulting code. I've not worked with PHP before, and while it seems fairly straightforward, I could easily scramble something important and not realize I'd done it until too late. 😕

    edalton

    Posted by mstovenour posts: 17 United States

    > I also need to add the ability to attach files to blog entries, so the podcasting can be done out of blogs. But right now I'm bogged down in the last week of teaching a stats class online, so it will be a while before I can finish this up. I could use some help testing the resulting code. I've not worked with PHP before, and while it seems fairly straightforward, I could easily scramble something important and not realize I'd done it until too late. 😕


    I would like to beta test this for you. I'll also consider how you might solve the URL problem. How should I contact you?

    Michael


    Posted by Bernhard posts: 104

    It might well be, that the necessary RSS XML code is not (yet) supported by TikiWiki to have a full-fledged integration.

    I'd go for Podcast Maker instead on the Mac, which is a great drag&drop tool which let's you easily create everything you ever wanted for Video or Audio-Podcasting. It will automatically upload your data to any kind of server and produce the necessary xml files.

    All that's left to do for tikiwiki is create a wiki-page which has a reference to your podcast.xml file. I don't really see a big value in integrating audio/video support in a CMS like system anyway.

    BR - Bernhard

    Posted by Elizabeth Dalton posts: 38 United States

    > I'd go for Podcast Maker instead on the Mac, which is a great drag&drop tool which let's you easily create everything you ever wanted for Video or Audio-Podcasting. It will automatically upload your data to any kind of server and produce the necessary xml files.
    >
    Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, though I use a Mac, many of our faculty use PCs, so this isn't an option for them.

    > I don't really see a big value in integrating audio/video support in a CMS like system anyway.
    >
    I'm surprised you should think so. CMS="Content Management System," and audio and video are certainly forms of content. We use Tiki to manage our media server at our university, and faculty want to make audio and video files available to students for pedagogical purposes. I know there are other Tiki users interested in learning applications (e.g. the LMS group). Tiki already supports blogs and RSS feeds, and audio and video blogging (podcast and vodcast) are becoming very popular. This seems to me like a very valuable addition to Tiki.

    I guess I'll just have to learn PHP and adapt the existing RSS generation myself.

    e. dalton


    Posted by Elizabeth Dalton posts: 38 United States

    I looked at the relevant code this week and I think I have most of it figured out. I have posted a proposal in the dev forum. Could someone please take a look at my proposal and tell me if I have found all the places in the code that I need to change?

    Damian, if you or coloweb could send me the sample code and specs you have, it might help.

    Thanks,

    e.dalton


    Posted by amette posts: 120 Germany

    > Hi all,
    >
    > I searched tw.org on both "podcasts" and "audio" and found a few hits, but nothing all that helpful. I'm looking for a way to let instructors at our university upload audio files and let students subscribe to the RSS feed using a podcatch tool such as iTunes. I created a test file gallery and uploaded a couple of sample audio files, then tried subscribing to the feeds a couple of different ways. Thunderbird handled the audio feed fine (once I enabled anonymous download of files), but iTunes can't parse the feed. Next I tried going through FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) using their "smartfeed" option, to see if the media files would be acceptably enclosed. iTunes still can't parse the feed. It seems to get directed straight through to the Tiki feed.
    >
    > Does anyone have a working setup for this? Thunderbird is fine as far as I'm concerned, but I know some folks think it's just not podcasting unless you can automate having the audio files loaded onto your mp3 player, and if we can't use iTunes, I think we're missing a big chunk of the potential audience.
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > e. dalton

    We shortly discussed that issue again on IRC and marclaporte dug out helpful links: