vdr-vodcatcher - a video podcast plug-in for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR) ========================================================================== Written by: Tobias Grimm Project's homepage: http://www.e-tobi.net/blog/pages/vdr-vodcatcher Copyright: (C) 2007 - 2009 Tobias Grimm License: This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (see file `COPYING`); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Translations: it: Diego Pierotto Description: ----------- The Vodcatcher plug-in allows to parse RSS feeds containing video streams as enclosures. The plug-in will play such streams by passing them to the MPlayer plug-in [1] or the Xineliboutput plug-in [2]. Besides the standard RSS feeds with video enclosures, the RSS services of videocast.srtwist.net are supported too. Requirements: ------------ The plugin requires libcurl, vdr 1.6.0 or above and the Mplayer or Xineliboutput plug-in. Building: -------- The following make variables can be overriden: DEFAULT_CACHE_DIR Specifies the default cache dir, where the xml feeds get cached. If not specified, this defaults to /var/cache/vdr-plugin-vodcatcher. The cache dir can also be changed at runtime using the --cache option. Command line arguments: ----------------------- The following parameters are available: --cache= Specify the cache dir, where the xml feeds get cached. This defaults to /var/cache/vdr-plugin-vodcatcher. Configuration ------------- In order to allow the MPlayer plug-in to play back the streams passed in by the Vodcatcher, you must add the following entry to the mplayersources.conf file: /tmp;Vodcatcher;0 An external configuration file named "vodcatchersources.conf" must exist in the subdirectory "plugins/" in VDR's configuration directory. In vodcatchersources.conf the URL's of the RSS feeds can be configured in the following way: # # videocast.srtwist.net # FEED_URL=http://videocast.srtwist.net Multiple FEED_URL-entries can be specified. A '#' indicates a comment just like in shell scripts. Setup parameters: ----------------- Max. download cache age (days) The number of days, files should be kept in the local cache. default: 30 days Media Player The media player used for playback. Can be "MPlayer" or "Xineliboutput". Usage: ------ By opening the plug-in's main menu entry in VDR's OSD, you enter the feed menu. This menu lists all the feeds you have configured in the file "vodcatchersources.conf". If the feed could not be downloaded or is not yet downloaded, it will be listed as "unknown". In this case, just try again later or check the URL in the config file. By selecting a feed from the menu and pressing OK, a menu listing all the feed items will open. If a feed item is linked to another RSS feed, you you press OK again to open this feed. If the selected feed item contains a video stream, you can start playback with the GREEN key. If the stream is available in different qualities (only possible with videocast.srtwist.net), you can toggle the quality with the YELLOW key, before playing it. The play back plug-in might need a while to cache the video stream, before playback starts. This can be several seconds depending on your plugin settings and the download speed. Known problems and todo's: -------------------------- - Recording of streams is not yet implemented --- [1]: http://www.muempf.de [2]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xineliboutput