genRSS

genRSS is a tool for generating an RSS 2.0 feed from media files within a directory. It can search for files recursively in subdirectories and restrict the search to specific file extensions.

Installation

Note: Another package named genrss already exists on PyPI. To install genRSS, please use generss (with an e after the n):

pip install generss

Once installed, you can run genRSS directly from the command line.

Determining Media File Duration

To include the duration of media files in your feeds (via the <itunes:duration> tag), genRSS attempts to determine the duration using the following tools, in order of preference:

1. mutagen: a python package (automatically installed if you install genRSS with pip) that supports both audio and video files.
2. sox: command-line tool, handles only audio files but is faster than ffprobe.
3. ffprobe: command-line tool, supports both audio and video files but is the slowest option.

If genRSS is unable to determine the media file duration using one tool, it will automatically fall back to the next one in the list. If none of these tools is available or if the file duration can't be retrieved, the <itunes:duration> tag will not be included in the feed.

Episode Descriptions

Text files with a .txt extension are automatically used to provide descriptions for media files that share the same name but have different extensions. As a result, files ending in .txt cannot be used as feed items.

Usage options

Type genRSS -h to show the usage options:

  -d DIRECTORY, --dirname DIRECTORY
                        Directory to look for media files in.
                        This directory name will be appended to the host name
                        to create absolute paths to your media files.
  -r, --recursive       Look for media files recursively in subdirectories
                        [Default:False]
  -e STRING, --extensions STRING
                        A comma separated list of extensions (e.g. mp3,mp4,avi,ogg)
                        [Default: all files]
  -o FILE, --out FILE   Output RSS file [default: stdout]
  -H URL, --host URL    Host name (or IP address), possibly with a protocol
                        (default: http) a port number and the path to the base
                        directory where your media directory is located.
                        Examples of host names:
                         - http://localhost:8080 [default]
                         - mywebsite.com/media/JapaneseLessons
                         - mywebsite
                         - 192.168.1.12:8080
                         - http://192.168.1.12/media/JapaneseLessons
  -i URL, --image URL   Absolute or relative URL for feed's image [default: None]
  -M, --metadata        Use media files' metadata to extract item title [default: False]
  -t STRING, --title STRING
                        Title of the podcast [Default: use directory name as title]
  -p STRING, --description STRING
                        Description of the podcast [Default:None]
  -C, --sort-creation   Sort files by date of creation instead of name (default)
  -v, --verbose         set verbose [default: False]

License

MIT