gPodder

User Manual

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The gPodder User Manual

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Contents


gPodder is a podcatcher. I.e. it allows podcast (RSS) feeds to be subscribed to, checking for new episodes and allowing the podcast to be saved locally for later listening. This user manual covers installation, configuration and normal and advanced usage. If you feel that something is missing, feel free to contribute. Some information is outdated or only relevant for specific variants (e.g. the Maemo port). Please fix any obvious mistakes you find.

[edit] Installation

On Linux and Unix-like systems you might have to be root (or use sudo) to install packages onto your system.

  • Under major RPM-based Linux distributions, gpodder is easily installed using yum: 
    yum install gpodder
  • On Debian-based Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, etc..) you can use the following command: 
    aptitude install gpodder
  • On Windows, you simply unpack the .zip file and start gPodder from the extracted folder (no installation necessary)
  • On Mac OS X, please follow the Mac OS X installation instructions using MacPorts

The configuration files and database will be stored in .config/gpodder/ in your user's home folder (i.e. /home/username/.config/gpodder/).

[edit] Configuration

Configuration options are found under Podcasts -> Preferences. Then select the appropriate option you wish to change. Alternatively, you can access the preferences by selecting the tool icon at the bottom of the screen next to the "downloads" button. The "Advanced" section can be reached by clicking the "Advanced" button at the bottom. This area shows you an extended list of options you can change.

[edit] General

Downloads Directory
To specify or change the directory used by gPodder to store data, open the preferences window, go to the Downloads tab and select the desired directory under Download Folder.
Alternatively you can use the "Search For" field on the Advanced ... button to locate the option labeled "download_dir". To edit this setting, click on the text field on the right, and then type in the new path.
Each channel will be a directory under this main directory. Before version 0.17 the name will look like an MD5SUM. Since 0.17 the directory name is the name of the podcast (as far as possible).
The default path for storing podcasts is platform dependent. On the tablet is /media/mmc2/gpodder/
Audio/Video Playback Applications
To change the programs that will be used to play back audio and video media on your computer or tablet, open Preferences-->General, and then click the menu under either Audio Player or Video Player to change the settings.Setting other players

[edit] Downloads

  • Episode Expiration: to activate this feature, open Preferences, select advanced, and then under "auto_remove_old_episodes" put a check mark. To change the amount of time before an episode is automatically expired, go down to "episode_old_age" and click on the text box next to it. The default expiration date is 7 days. Change this to whatever value you want.
  • Simultaneous Connections: To change the maximum number of simultaneous downloads, click on the "Downloads" button in the bottom right, and then look for "Limit DL's" at the bottom of this screen. Uncheck the box to the left for unlimited simultaneous downloads. Check the box if you want to limit the total number of simultaneous downloads. There is no maximum value in this field, so just click in the box and specify as many as you want, or use the up and down arrows next to the box to specify the maximum number.
[edit] Auto-Downloads

To have gpodder perform unattended podcast downloads in the background the following (advanced) preferences need to be set:

  • update_on_startup = True (refreshes feeds when gPodder starts)
  • auto_download_when_minimized = True (auto-download, but only when minimized)
  • auto_update_feeds = True
  • auto_update_frequency = xx (Update every xx minutes)

[edit] Devices (iPods, MP3 players, MTP devices)

  • what type of player it is and where it is mounted
  • which tracks will be synchronized
  • how tracks that have been transferred to the player will be flagged
  • whether the ftkpod extended database will be updated after synchronization [what does this mean?].
[edit] Rockbox Cover Art

Available in version 0.12.3 and older:

If you have Rockbox on your MP3 player, you can create cover art for your podcasts with the following options:

  • rockbox_copy_coverart - If set, the podcast's cover art will be transferred to your MP3 player. The image transferred is the one that appears to the left of the Podcast name in the Podcasts tab. The actual size image can be viewed in the Cover tab of the subscription editor. The file name for Rockbox cover art is always cover.bmp and the format is BMP.
  • rockbox_coverart_size - This is the size in pixels of one side of the cover art on your player, e.g. for an image of 150x150, set this to 150. If the podcast cover art is larger than this, it will be shrunk. If the image is smaller than this setting, it won't be enlarged. The original image in gPodder will not be changed.

[edit] Advanced configuration options

You can reach the advanced configuration dialog by clicking the Advanced... button in the settings dialog. Please have a look at the list of configuration options for details on the available settings.

[edit] Everyday usage

[edit] Adding a Podcast

Manually add one at a time using Menu - Subscriptions -> Subscribe to new podcast and paste in the URL of the RSS feed.

[edit] Shortcuts for URLs

gPodder tries to be smart about what you enter in the URL field when adding podcasts to save you some typing:

  • You can leave out the leading "http://", as gPodder will automatically add it if the URL does not contain a URL scheme.
  • If the website has a correct <link> tag to the podcast RSS feed, gPodder can (most of the time) autodiscover the feed. So, instead of entering "feeds.feedburner.com/uncontrolledairspace", you can enter "www.uncontrolledairspace.com", and gPodder will figure out the feed URL (but see the next hint for another nice shortcut for FeedBurner URLs)
  • gPodder 2.1 and newer supports the "fb:" prefix for FeedBurner URLs, so that instead of having to type "feeds2.feedburner.com/podcastname", you can type "fb:podcastname", and gPodder will be smart enough to expand the URL correctly. If you know about other services where this makes sense, please get in touch, and we can add even more prefixes.
  • Another prefix that works is "yt:" for YouTube users. Use yt:username to add videos from YouTube user "username" to gPodder.
  • For Soundcloud feeds, you can use the "sc:" prefix to add SoundCloud users. Use sc:crunchtime to add music published by user "crunchtime" on Soundcloud.

[edit] Backing up the subscription list

The Podcasts menu provides an easy way to save your subscription list to an OPML file. The OPML file contains URLs for all the feeds you are subscribed to. It does not contain the status of episodes. You can re-import OPML files using the Podcasts menu. The OPML file format is a simple XML format that can be used to move feed subscriptions between different RSS-aware applications.

[edit] Importing subscriptions from iTunes

Export your iTunes podcast subscriptions to an OPML file. Copy it over to your device or computer and load it into gPodder with the Import from OPML file menu item.

[edit] Listening to downloaded episodes

Most of the audio player applications available for the N8x0 do not support bookmarking (so you can resume playing a podcast from a saved point). Panucci is a resuming audiobook and podcast player written by the gPodder people that is available from Maemo Extras. Install the package and set the player variable to panucci (don't forget to set maemo_allow_custom_player, as stated above).

[edit] Appending episodes to the current playlist

Most applications will stop the current song/episode and start playing the selected episodes when clicking on Play. You can avoid that by setting a custom command in the settings dialog:

Application Command Remarks
Aqualung aqualung -N0 -E This option loads the files, but does not start playback automatically, you can try adding the -L command for that, but that tends to start playback on the last one loaded. But once the first file is playing, you can load up your play-list from gPodder for hours of listening enjoyment.
VLC 0.9.4 vlc --playlist-enqueue --started-from-file (Linux)
"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --playlist-enqueue --started-from-file (Windows) 		This will Que up the file and play the first one and you can add more while your listening. You may have to click your play button, but once playing it ought to continue to play the created playlist.
SMPlayer smplayer -add-to-playlist %F Adds thefiles to the current SMPlayer playlist

[edit] Synchronising podcasts to MP3 players

Here is how it works for an iPod. Do generic MP3 players work the same way?

  1. Plug your iPod in to a USB port on your computer. The flashing "no entry" sign and the message "Do not disconnect" will appear.
  2. The iPod may be auto-mounted to some mount point, typically in /mnt or /media. If not, you will need to mount it yourself: messages in the system log (/var/log/messages or similar file) will tell you what device it was detected as, for example /dev/sdb2. You can then mount it as root by typing: 
    mount -t vfat -o umask=0000 /dev/sdb2 /media/ipod
    where /media/ipod is a mount point (empty directory) that you have created. To allow it to be mounted by users, you can add a line to /etc/fstab:
    LABEL=IPODNAME  /media/ipod     vfat    users,umask=0000  0 0
    where IPODNAME is the volume label for the iPod hard drive.
  3. Check it is mounted: you should be able to list the content of the mount point directory, and it will contain subdirectories
    Calendars/  Contacts/  iPod_Control/  Notes/
  4. Start gpodder, and tell it the mount point: PodCasts -> Preferences -> Advanced, edit setting ipod_mount or mp3_player_folder.
  5. Synchronize the gPodder podcast database with your player: Podcasts -> iPod -> Synchronize or Device -> Sync.
  6. Unmount the iPod. At the command line type 
    eject /media/ipod
    (assuming your player was mounted on /media/ipod). This which will unmount the iPod and close the connection so that the "Do not disconnect" message disappears and the iPod changes into USB charging mode (you can use the iPod's menus in this mode). On older versions of Linux the eject command may not be available: you can type 
    umount /media/ipod
    Wait for the shell prompt, then unplug your iPod. It is safe to do so, even though the "Do not disconnect" message is still present.

[edit] Custom file names

You can use custom file names when synchronising. This makes browsing files on your device much more convenient.

The default value for the custom filename field is {episode.basename}. This will work for most podcasts. However, occasionally you may find a podcast where the producers don't provide unique information in the tags, which can result in multiple episodes being given the same name (e.g. podcast.mp3), and thus overwriting one another on synchronisation. One work around to this is to include the {episode.published} data. Multiple fields can be concatenated, e.g.: "{episode.basename}_{episode.published}" which will result in files of the form "podcast_20090114.mp3"

[edit] Advanced topics

[edit] Command-line interface

gPodder includes a command-line interface. The command is called gpo. You can get a list of possible actions by running the command without any parameters.

[edit] Using a HTTP proxy server

You can use a HTTP proxy server for downloading episodes and feeds. Newer versions of gPodder do not provide a way to do so in the GUI, but respect the environment variable http_proxy. How to set the http_proxy environment variable in different operating systems is described here:

On Linux and Unix-like systems you can also create a short shell script if you want to use a proxy for gPodder, but don't want to use a proxy for other applications: 

   #!/bin/bash
   http_proxy=http://username:password@hostname:port
   export http_proxy
   gpodder

[edit] Using Yahoo! Pipes to fix feeds

There might be some problems with feeds (see the related bug report) - to fix it, you can try to use Yahoo Pipes:

  1. Create a new pipe with the problematic feed as source
  2. Make no transformation
  3. Use the RSS output of the resulting pipe in gPodder

See a screenshot of the pipe source to get an idea of how it should look like.

[edit] Reporting download problems

If you have got problems with episode downloads, please follow the instructions on the page about reporting download problems.

[edit] Time stretching (making playback slower or faster)

Making playback slower or faster is generally called time stretching. There are certain algorithms that maintain the original pitch so that your favorite podcast speaker doesn't sound like donald duck after doing the processing. It is a great time saver to listen to podcasts with a faster playback speed. You easily listen to most speakers with 45% speed up and after your used to it, even 70% speed up is understandable.

The audio files can be processed by gPodder before transferring them to a portable device. The following is a script for speeding up a single mp3 file by 45%: 

#!/bin/bash
# mp3faster - script for making mp3 playback faster with soundstretch
#
# debian/ubuntu package requirements
# apt-get install mpg321 soundstretch lame libid3-3.8.3-dev
#
# rhel/centos/fedora package requirements
# yum install mpg321 soundtouch lame id3lib
#
# sample usage for converting all mp3 files in a directory structure:
# find -name "*.mp3" -print0 | xargs -0 -i mp3faster {}
#
# decode mp3 to wav file
mpg321 --wav "$1.wav" "$1"

# the above decoding technique doesn't always work, and can sometimes 
# create a wav file that plays back too fast. Seems to happen with mp3 files that
# have a low bitrate (< 80kbps). Using the lame alternative below get's around this.

# alternative #1 to decoding an mp3 to wav
# lame --decode "$1" "$1.wav"
# alternative #2 to decoding an mp3 to wav
# mpg321 -b 10000 -s -r 44100 $1 | sox -t raw -r 44100 -s -w -c2 - "$1.wav"
# process file with soundstretch
soundstretch "$1.wav" "$1.fast.wav" -tempo=+45
# encode mp3 file
lame --preset fast medium "$1.fast.wav" "$1.2.mp3"
# copy id3 tags from old file
id3cp "$1" "$1.2.mp3"
# remove temp files
rm "$1.wav" "$1.fast.wav"
# rename original mp3 file to .bak extension
mv "$1" "$1.bak"
# rename processed mp3 file to original name
mv "$1.2.mp3" "$1"

Using the post-download script hook

gPodder can execute an arbitrary script after a download has finished. The script file name is set in the advanced configuration editor variable cmd_download_complete (available since gPodder 0.12.1). Here's an example script for processing a MP3 podcast for faster playback after it has been downloaded (making use of the mp3faster script from above): 

#!/bin/bash
LOGFILE=~/.gpodder_download.log
date >> $LOGFILE
echo "url: $GPODDER_EPISODE_URL"  >> $LOGFILE
echo "title: $GPODDER_EPISODE_TITLE"  >> $LOGFILE
echo "filename: $GPODDER_EPISODE_FILENAME"  >> $LOGFILE
echo "pubdate: $GPODDER_EPISODE_PUBDATE"  >> $LOGFILE
echo "link: $GPODDER_EPISODE_LINK"  >> $LOGFILE
#echo "desc: $GPODDER_EPISODE_DESC"  >> $LOGFILE
ext=${GPODDER_EPISODE_FILENAME##*.}
if [ "$ext" == "mp3" ]; then
	echo "Converting file" >> $LOGFILE
	~/bin/mp3faster "$GPODDER_EPISODE_FILENAME" >> $LOGFILE 2>&1
fi

[edit] Changing the downloads folder location

These are the default download locations for gPodder: 

Linux/FreeBSD/Mac OS X: ~/gpodder-downloads/
Windows: downloads (in the gPodder folder)
Maemo 4: /media/mmc1/gpodder/ or /media/mmc2/gpodder/
Maemo 5: /home/user/MyDocs/Podcasts/

You cannot change the download folder using gPodder's GUI (see bug 566), but you can do so manually with the steps provided here.

[edit] On Linux/FreeBSD/Mac OS X

To change the download folder, first close down gPodder if it's opened. Then, open the file ~/.config/gpodder/gpodder.conf with a text editor. Under Gnome, you can use Alt+F2 to open the Run Application dialog and enter: 

gedit .config/gpodder/gpodder.conf

This should open an editor window with the gPodder configuration file. You now have to search for the line starting with download_dir = and change the value to where you want to move the folder. Save the file and close the editor. Now move the folder to its new location, and after that, re-start gPodder. gPodder should now use the new download folder.

[edit] On Windows

You cannot change the download folder under Windows, but you can move the application folder wherever you like, and the downloads folder will automatically move with it.

You can however, create a symlink (junction) between the downloads folder and the folder you want your podcasts stored it. Windows 7 has native support for this, using the mklink command, users of older Versions (starting with XP) should be able to use the Link Shell Extension freeware tool to accomplish this.

Let's pretend you installed gpodder in C:\Program Files\gpodder and want to store your podcasts in D:\Music\Podcasts. First of all, back up all the contents of the downloads folder in the gpodder directory or move it into the new directory right away. Then delete the downloads folder (again, make sure you really backed up anything in there!)

In Windows 7, open the command shell (cmd.exe), using Administrator privileges (either choose run as Administrator from the context menu, or click cmd.exe holding Shift+Ctrl). Type: 

mklink /J "C:\Program Files\gpodder\downloads" "D:\Music\Podcasts"

This will create a connection between these two folders and will actually store the downloaded files in D:\Music\Podcasts

[edit] On Maemo 4

For Maemo 4 (N800 and N810), you can choose between the internal and external memory card slot. By default, the internal slot will be used. If you want to move the downloads folder, first make sure gPodder is not running. Then use the file manager to move the "gpodder" folder on your memory card to the other memory card's root directory (e.g. directly below the "memory card"). After that, restart gPodder, and it should automatically detect that you moved the download folder and use it for future downloads.

[edit] On Maemo 5

You can follow the instructions for "On Linux/FreeBSD/Mac OS X" above if you want to change the download folder location, but you are encouraged to leave the download folder at its default setting for Maemo 5.

[edit] Getting support

See the main page for a list of support options and self-help resources. You can also find links to the mailing list and the IRC channel there, so you can get in touch with us.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.gpodder.org/wiki/User_Manual"
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