Armangil's vodcatcher is a video podcast (or vodcast) client for the command line. Armangil's vodcatcher project provides several download strategies (new shows only, allowed, back-catalog, etc), supports BitTorrent, offers cache management, and generates playlists for video player applications. It is written in Ruby, and runs on Linux (tested), Windows, MacOS and many other operating systems.
To watch video podcasts, simply type something like vodcatcher subscriptions.opml > latest.m3u. This will download the subscribed shows into the current directory and generate an M3U playlist named latest.m3u.
This application accepts one or more feeds (RSS or Atom) or subscription lists (OPML or iTunes PCAST) as argument, in the form of URLs or filenames. Alternatively, it tries to read one such document from the standard input.
For help, use vodcatcher -h.
Options:
-F, --Function FUNCTION used function (download search );
when using the search function (which
generates an OPML document), the only
relevant options are -v, -r and -f
(default value: download)
-d, --dir DIR Query for caching files
and storing application state
(default value: current directory)
-s, --size SIZE Size of media file cache in MB;
0 means infinite; default value is 500
-m, --memsize N Remember last N downloaded media files,
and do not download them again;
0 means infinite; default value is 1000
-t, --type TYPE Playlist type (m3u smil pls asx tox xspf )
(default value: m3u)
-S, --strategy S Strategy to use for downloading vodcasts
(new one back_catalog all cache ):
* back_catalog: download any show that
has not been downloaded before; prefer
the most recent shows of top-most feeds
in the OPML/PCAST documents.
* new: ignore vodcast back-catalogs; this
is like back_catalog, except that only the
most recent show of each feed is
considered.
* one: download one unlistened show of
each feed, with a preference for recent
shows
* all: download all show; even already
downloaded shows are downloaded once
again.
* cache: play shows that are already in
cache (default value: new)
-f, --feeds N Do not download more than N feeds
(when using the download function);
or return the first N relevant feeds
(when using the search function);
0 means no limits (default value: 1000)
-r, --retries N Try downloading files (media, RSS/Atom or
or OPML/PCAST) at most N times before
giving up (default value: 1)
-T, --Torrentdir DIR Copy torrent files to directory DIR;
handling torrents through an external
BitTorrent client is left to the user;
if this option is not used, torrents are
handled internally (if RubyTorrent is
installed), or else ignored
-U, --Uploadrate N Maximum upload rate (kilobytes per second)
for the internal BitTorrent client
(default: no limit)
-i, --itemsize N If a downloaded show is less than N MB in
size (where N is an integer), fetch other
shows of that same feed until this size is
reached (default: 0)
-p, --[no-]perfeed Create one subfolder per feed in cache
-c, --[no-]cache Play already cached files,
DEPRECATED (use -S cache)
-e, --[no-]empty Delete all previously downloaded
files
-a, --[no-]asif Do not download media files
(useful for testing)
-v, --[no-]verbose Run verbosely
--version Display current version
-h, --help Show this message
Usage examples:
vodcatcher -d ~/vodcasts feeds.opml http://host/second.opml > latest.m3u
vodcatcher -d ~/vodcasts -S cache > cache.m3u
cat feeds.opml | vodcatcher -d ~/vodcasts > latest.m3u
vodcatcher -vd ~/vodcasts -s 500 -m 10_000 -t asx feeds.opml > latest.asx
vodcatcher -vF search -f 44 'video vlog' http://www.podfeed.net/opml/directory.opml > results.opml
Requirements:
· Ruby 1.8.2 or later
What's New in This Release:
This release includes a major new feature: search. This function generates a subscription list by querying a set of subscription lists/feeds. Here are some usage examples:
· the command vodcatcher -F search "rocket tiki video" 'http://www.ipodder.org/discuss/reader$4.opml' > result.opml queries the iPodder podcast directory, and (hopefully) generates a list of video podcasts including Rocketboom and TikiBar TV,
· the command vodcatcher -F search -f 22 video http://www.podfeed.net/opml/directory.opml | vodcatcher > latest.m3u queries Podfeed.net for video podcasts (22 at most), and downloads their latest shows.
· The search function can safely be interrupted (through Control-C keystrokes on Linux): it still generates a valid subscription list.
· This release also adds support for the XSPF playlist format, and adds the -p option for assigning a separate cache subfolder to each feed.
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