Podcasting not working, help!

[magnus]

I've got Podcasting enabled in the External Data Providers and I have the Podcasting option enabled for the specific forum. However, when I access the external.php feed, I get all of the itunes information but NOT the file attachment.

Does it matter that I moved attachments to the filesystem?

[Floris]

Unfortunatly I have too little experience with this new feature yet. We also do not yet support vBulletin 3.6 while it is in beta. If you believe you run into a bug you can submit it as so in the bugtracker. I can't confirm right now if this is because you have files in the file system.

I will see if a dev is online and give him a poke.

[magnus]

Ok, after a while it did add the enclosure tag with the attachment. Why does it take time, why isn't it instant? I deleted the post and did another attachment and yet the RSS still hasn't updated, it's been like 10 minutes. Am I missing something here? It still shows the old attachment/post info that no longer exists.

I'd gladly report this as a bug once I'm sure it is one and not of my own doing somehow.

[Floris]

Maybe teh attachments were in moderation or the cache for the RSS hasn't updated?

[magnus]

Maybe teh attachments were in moderation or the cache for the RSS hasn't updated?

Yea, it was a cache issue. Temporarily, I've changed the external cache to 1m rather than the 60m default.

The only problem now, is while the xml is itunes compatible -- the attachment method isn't. Ugh, this is such a headache. There's a redirect of some sort going on, and it's throwing iTunes off...

[magnus]

Ok, here's the problem. When storing attachments to the file system they are accessed via {url}/attachment.php/#/[name] this is fine and dandy, except iTunes rejects it because of "attachment.php".

Anyone got a work around for this? /sigh

[Freddie Bingham]

What is your server OS? The iTunes programmers decided it would be best to determine the file type of an enclosure by the extension of the file rather than from the mime-type. Since they've chosen this method, all we can do it use some path trickery to fool it. It won't work for all servers though.

It is also possible that iTunes has changed something since I developed this and I'll need to look into it. Fill me in on your server information. Does the archive work on your forum?

[Freddie Bingham]

Here is the relevant section of the manual

Podcast Settings The Podcast Settings (Forums & Moderators > Forum Manager > Podcast Settings) section allows you to configure iTunes specific settings for your forums.

Podcast feeds will work inside of iTunes (and other aggregates that support enclosures) without any information on this page being filled in. These settings are used when you wish to submit one of your
forums as a podcast to iTunes as a podcast that can be searched for and seen from within iTunes.

• Enabled
  This setting enables the output of the information entered on this page.
• Category
  This setting corresponds to categories defined within iTunes. This list is subject to being updated by Apple and the latest list can be found at Apple - iTunes - Podcasts. You can update the categories that you are able to choose from by modifying a file in your forums directory that contains the categories that vBulletin displays for your choosing. The file is located on your server in your forums directory at /includes/xml/podcast_vbulletin.xml
• Media Author
  This is shown in the Artist column in iTunes.
• Owner Name
  Your name, or the name of the person to be associated with control of this podcast.
• Owner Email
  Your email, or the email of the person to be associated with control of this podcast.
• Image URL
  This tag specifies the artwork for your podcast. iTunes prefers square .jpg or .png images that are at least 300 x 300 pixels.
• Subtitle
  The contents of this tag are shown in the Description column in iTunes. The subtitle displays best if it is only a few words long. If this is left blank, the Summary will be used.
• Keywords
  This tag allows users to search on text keywords within iTunes. Use commas to separate keywords.
• Summary
  The contents of this tag are shown in a separate iTunes window that appears when the “circled i" in the Description column is clicked. It also appears on the iTunes page for your podcast. This field can be up to 4000 characters. If this field is left blank, your forum description will be used.
• Explicit
  Set this to Yes if your podcast contains Explicit material. Not setting this properly can result in your podcast being banned from iTunes.

Warning:
There are several caveats that you must be aware of for this process to be successful.

Requirements:

1. vBulletin Options > External Data Provider > Enable RSS Syndication must be enabled.
2. vBulletin Options > External Data Provider > Enable Podcasting must be enabled.
3. The forum in question must be viewable by guests.
4. Attachments in the forum must be viewable by guests.
5. You must set Enabled to Yes and select a Category.
6. ONly the first attachment of the first post will be included as an enclosure.
7. The feed to your podcast must be called with the forumid of the forum. You can not combine multiple forums into a podcast that includes iTunes specific information.
   Ex: http://www.example.com/forums/external.php?forumids=2
8. iTunes only support six filetypes: .m4a, .m4v, .mp3, .mp4, .mov, and .pdf
9. Due to the decision of Apple to limit valid enclosure urls to those that end with the extensions listed above, podcasting via iTunes will not work on IIS servers and possibly others. If you need help verifying that podcasting will work on your server, please contact vBulletin support. Hopefully, Apple will come to realize that there are better ways to determine valid urls and will lift this restriction in the future.

[magnus]

I'm running on a Debian Linux box:

# uptime
Linux [host] 2.6.8-2-686-smp #1 SMP Thu May 19 17:27:55 JST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux

When feeding the external.php link to iTunes, it displays all the correct content information, author, site title, etc. The only thing that doesn't work is the actual media file.

What I did as a test was to cut and paste the xml (view source) to an xml file then change the path in the <enclosure> tags. Once I did that, everything worked fine.

Further testing indicates that iTunes is not rejecting it based on /attachment.php/ but rather the fact that it's provided a redirect. Apparently, iTunes doesn't accept (or doesn't understand) a redirect.

Here's what I tried with their results:

1. Setting up a RewriteRule to use /a/ inplace of /attachment.php/ and modified external.php to reflect that change-- when cut and paste into a brower, this worked -- however iTunes was not fooled, it still sensed the redirect.

2. Copying the attachment to an absolute path out of attachment.php control -- this was the only solution that worked, although not really a solution because this more or less renders the entire Podcasting support useless.


All of the Podcasting options within vBulletin are setup to spec, that's not an issue as I confirmed that when I copied the generated XML to a static file.

* Edit: Perhaps saving the attachment with it's original filename rather than [#].attach could solve this issue, rather than relying on attachment.php processing.

[Freddie Bingham]

It isn't being sent a redirect. The link to attachment.php just adds the filename on to the end so that iTunes sees the name as the end of the link. I'll look at it on Monday to see if something has changed on the iTunes side.

[Freddie Bingham]

I just tested this and it does work fine. What type of file are you attaching? What is the filename? Can you send me the url to your forum and an admin login so I can test this for myself?

[Easyskillz]

Hey guys ...once you have done all this. What is the link to the xml file ?

edit : nevermind, it's just like rss so i just added http://www.maroceve.com/forums36/external.php to my Juice. Works like a charm
But why didn't you guys put an icon or something for people to click on ? that says "RSS" our "PODCAST" or something ...Only mozilla detects it automatically but some people don't really know ...

[magnus]

Hey guys ...once you have done all this. What is the link to the xml file ?

edit : nevermind, it's just like rss so i just added http://www.maroceve.com/forums36/external.php to my Juice. Works like a charm
But why didn't you guys put an icon or something for people to click on ? that says "RSS" our "PODCAST" or something ...Only mozilla detects it automatically but some people don't really know ...

Well, be sure to append ?forumids=# to the end of external.php -- so you only pull the data for the Podcast forum.

What I did is just added a RewriteRule to my .htaccess so people can just access podcast.xml -- easier to submit to iTunes and easier for people to remember. :P

[marksman]

I am having a similar problem to what Magnus was experiencing.

I set up a forum with podcasting, attached a mp3 file to a post, but when I try to use it in iTunes it is not able to bring up the actual file and play it. It does not seem to be showing up.

I am a bit stumped as to what to do right now.

This is with RC4 btw.

Edit: Never mind. I figured out my malfunction. I was using the rss designation on the external.php listing. Once I just used the external.php?&forumids=25 without the rss it worked fine.

[Floris]

I am having a similar problem to what Magnus was experiencing.

I set up a forum with podcasting, attached a mp3 file to a post, but when I try to use it in iTunes it is not able to bring up the actual file and play it. It does not seem to be showing up.

I am a bit stumped as to what to do right now.

This is with RC4 btw.

Edit: Never mind. I figured out my malfunction. I was using the rss designation on the external.php listing. Once I just used the external.php?&forumids=25 without the rss it worked fine.

Without the rss it will default to xml i believe ..