Getting Non-RSS podcasts into the ipod Podcast menu: SOLUTION

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dvydra

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Ever since I started listening to podcasts, I've had trouble with publishers who don't have an RSS feed for their podcast.

Sometimes they are torrent download only, or the author hasn't organised an RSS, or whatever.

Unless you download a podcast with iTunes, the ipod doesn't categorise it correctly under the "Podcast" menu item.

iTunes actually modifies the headers of the mp3 file when it downloads it.

This was frustrating.

However, I've worked out a way around it.

THE SOLUTION

1) Create your own RSS file! Google "podcast rss format", and look at the first two links. (i'd like to post urls, but apparently i'm not "established" enough :))

Fill in enough of the tags to identify the podcast.

Pay special attention to the <enclosure url="..."> tag. Edit this to point to the url of the podcast.

2) Upload this rss file to the web (or your own local http server) and then point itunes to that url. It will then be able to download the files and import them into itunes correctly.

If you have already downloaded the files from the original source, or they are not available as a http download from the original source, you can host them yourself on a local http server (apache, iis, etc), or upload them to some webspace that you own and edit the enclosure file as required.

Awesome.

Happy to help if anybody has questions.
 

cks2006

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To add:
If you don't have a web server on your computer, I recommend an Apache based personal server called xampplite.

At the home folder:

I have an index.html, with links to the xml file(s) (so you can copy and paste link location into iTunes).

I have the xml files for my personal podcasts.

I have a media folder, with subfolders for each podcast.
The key is to get the exact URL of the mp3 file into the xml file, as the web browser will see. Make suer it uses standard characters, and if it has a space in the filename, replace that with %20
You don't need to bother with the ID3 tags, IME.

My personal podcasts are recordings of radio programs I record, edit out the commercials and things, and encode to a compatible MP3.
 
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