I’ve recently developed a small PHP script, the WPEnclosureAdder (source | try) that goes through each item in an RSS feed, looks for links to YouTube videos or GoogleVideo videos, and then adds an enclosure tags for the videos. If multiple videos are found embedded in a post, then that post is duplicated in the feed for each additional URL to provide compatibility with the many RSS readers/video-podcast viewers that expect a single enclosure per post.
I wrote this script because I have been recently making heavy use of Miro (formerly known as “The Democracy Player“) to download videos from YouTube in order to watch them off-line. Miro also provides a nice UI for aggregating videos and remembers my spot when I go back to watching later (nice for long documentaries). Miro however, expects links to videos in RSS enclosure tags, something that WordPress (and probably other blogging software) doesn’t do for embeded videos.
Throw Away Your Telescreen is a video blog done by one of my favorite geo-political bloggers, Dave on Fire, and a few others. In it they link out to the most interesting “documentaries, lectures, and interviews that follow a different editorial line” from the corporate press. I highly recommend all of the videos on it that I have seen.
Throw Away Your Telescreen has all the makings of an indie-news channel, perfect for Miro which was developed to encourage participatory media and culture. The only thing missing was to get the videos embedded in Throw Away Your Telescreen’s posts in such a way that Miro can find them. With the WPEnclosureAdder, this has now been done. Use this feed to view Throw Away Your Telescreen in Miro.
More about the WPEnclosureAdder:
- View the source-code of the latest version. (save-as to download)
- License: GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later
- Requirements (for hosting it yourself): PHP version 5.2 or later
- Git Repository: http://www2.adamfranco.com/WPEnclosureAdder.git
I wrote this script with Throw Away Your Telescreen in mind, but it should work with any other WordPress blog, and probably with RSS feeds generated from other blogging tools. To point it at another blog’s RSS feed, enter the feed url in the form below:
Using my version will use my default search strings for YouTube and GoogleVideo videos. If you would like to change what is being searched for, please download the script, change the configuration, and host it on your own website. I have licensed the WPEnclosureAdder under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later, so you are free to copy and modify this script as per the terms of that license.
Hi Adam,
Thanks once again for your help here.
I have finally got around to creating the Miro channel you suggested. Their feed validator points at one or two bugs in your feed generator. They seem pretty minor, so I will be using it nonetheless, but I thought you’d like to know.
Cheers,
Dave 🙂
Brilliant – I was going to do exactly the same! Thanks for sharing it.