The gPodder User Manual
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In general, the assumption is that you are running the latest version of gPodder 3 (see the Downloads page). Things written here might not exist or work as described in older versions of gPodder. When information applies to older versions of gPodder, this will (should) be explicitly stated.
Contents
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gPodder is a podcatcher, i.e. an application that allows podcast feeds (RSS, Atom, Youtube, Soundcloud, Vimeo and XSPF) to be subscribed to, checks for new episodes and allows 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 Some information is outdated or only relevant for specific variants (e.g. the Maemo port).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.
You can find installation instructions and downloads links on the Downloads page.
If you want to try the latest version, see the instructions at: Running gPodder from Git
In general, if you get gPodder via Git or the source tarball, simply run it directly from the source checkout and don't try to install it system-wide (use your distro's packages for system-wide installation).
gPodder is designed to also run directly from a source checkout (the maintainer uses it like that all the time):
If you have checked out the source, but are missing dependencies, you can make the source checkout a self-contained gPodder setup with all dependencies by running:
This will download feedparser and mygpoclient and place them into src/ - bin/gpodder and bin/gpo will be able to pick these modules up from there, so all you really need is Python >= 2.6 on your system.
gPodder has numerous configuration options to set its behaviour: how it plays podcasts, handles downloads, and many others.
To change gPodder's configuration, open the Preferences dialog box by choosing Podcasts > Preferences from the menu bar, clicking the Preferences button on the toolbar, or typing Ctrl-P. Then click the tab containing the options you want to change.
Click the General tab to see gPodder's general configuration options.
Audio player: Use this drop-down list of compatible audio players installed on your system to choose the one gPodder uses to play audio podcasts. Currently pre-populated application lists are only supported in Linux. (OS X and Windows users, keep reading!)
You can also click the Edit button next to the list to enter a custom audio player command. For example, you might want to run the player with some additional options, or choose a different player that does not appear on the list.
Video player: Use this drop-down list to choose the video player gPodder uses to play video podcasts. This option works the same as the Audio player option, except that it shows media players capable of playing video files.
gPodder.net is a Web service that helps you synchronize your podcast subscriptions across multiple devices, discover interesting new podcasts and recommend your podcasts to others. Click the gpodder.net tab to set how gPodder interacts with gPodder.net.
Synchronize subscriptions and episode actions: Check this box to merge the subscriptions on your computer or device with your subscription list on gPodder.net. These podcast subscriptions are now available to any other devices you sync with gPodder.net.
Username: Enter your gPodder.net username.
Password: Enter your gPodder.net password.
Device name: Enter a meaningful name for your computer, or keep the one gPodder.net assigns. Make sure the name is unique.
Replace list on server with local subscriptions: Click this button to replace the subscription list on gPodder.net with the list on your device.
Click the Updating tab to see gPodder's options for updating feeds and downloading new episodes.
Update interval: Drag this slider to choose the frequency that gPodder checks your feeds for new podcast episodes. This time period can be between 10 minutes and 12 hours. If you drag the slider all the way to the left, gPodder will not check for new podcasts automatically, and you will have to update them yourself.
Maximum number of episodes per podcast: Use this spin box to set the maximum number of episodes that gPodder keeps in each podcast feed. Once this maximum is reached, gPodder deletes the oldest episodes in the feed as new ones are added.
When new episodes are found: Use this drop-down list to choose what you want gPodder to do when it finds new podcast episodes on a feed. The available options are:
Click the Clean-up tab to see gPodder's options for managing old downloaded podcasts.
Delete played episodes: Drag this slider to set the length of time before gPodder automatically deletes old podcasts. This time period can be between one and 30 days. If you drag the slider all the way to the left, podcast episodes will not be deleted automatically, and you will have to manage them yourself.
Remove played episodes even if unfinished: By default, gPodder automatically deletes old played but unfinished episodes. Clear this check box if you would like to keep unfinished episodes until you have played them completely. If you have chosen to delete played episodes manually, this option is not available.
Also remove unplayed episodes: By default, gPodder automatically deletes played episodes but leaves unplayed ones alone. Check this box if you want gPodder to clean up unplayed episodes as well. If you have chosen to delete played episodes manually, this option is not available.
Click the Devices tab to see gPodder's options for portable media player devices.
Device type: Choose the type of device from this drop-down list that matches your player. The available options are:
Note that as of version 3.2.0, gPodder only supports syncing with filesystem-based devices. Check the user documentation for your device if you're unsure what kind it is.
Mountpoint: Click this button to choose the mount point where your media player normally appears on your system. For example, on a Windows system it might be drive F:.
Create Playlists on device: Enable this option to have gPodder create a m3u format playlist on your device during the sychronisation process. This is only supported for filesystem-based media players. If 'Create Playlists on device' is enabled, the following settings can also be configured:
After syncing an episode: Choose what you want gPodder to do after it transfers a podcast eposide to your player. The available options are:
Only sync unplayed episodes: Check this box if you want gPodder to ignore episodes that have already been played, when synchronizing podcasts to your device.
Flattr is a microdonation system that allows you to fund online content creators. You pay a small monthly fee (set by yourself), and it is shared between all the online resources you "flattr," or choose to support. Click the Flattr tab to see gPodder's options for Flattr.
gPodder has many configuration options that are not all directly accessible through the Preferences dialogue box. Click the Edit config button to access the gPodder Configuration Editor, where you can see and change the full list of configuration options.
Manually add one at a time using Menu - Subscriptions -> Subscribe to new podcast and paste in the URL of the RSS feed.
gPodder tries to be smart about what you enter in the URL field when adding podcasts to save you some typing:
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.
You can also backup the files Database (an SQLite 3 database containing subscription and episode information) and Settings.json (a JSON file containing your settings) in $GPODDER_HOME (defaults to ~/gPodder/).
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. To export your iTunes podcast subscriptions to an OPML file right click on "podcasts" in your source menu on the right hand side. Select "export" and save as an OPML file. See http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/.
Older versions of gpodder have an Import from OPML file menu item while newer versions may not. If you have the import option, you can select it, browse to your opml file and import it.
At this point you should have a local list of subscriptions. You can push these up to gpodder.net via the Replace list on server with local subscriptions button on the Preferences : gpodder.net tab.
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).
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 queue up the file and play the first one and you can add more while you're 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 the files to the current SMPlayer playlist |
Synchronising podcasts to MP3 Players is currently only supported for filesystem-based media players. iPod support is planned for a future release.
Before you can synchronise podcasts to your media player, you should ensure that the player has been set up properly in the 'Device' tab. See above for details.
To initiate a sync, select 'Sync to Device' from the 'Extras' menu. If you have the 'Create Playlists on device' option enabled, the m3u playlists will be written to your device and then the episodes will be copied over. You see the current status of the sync from the 'Progress' tab of the main gPodder window. From here, you can also control the number of episodes written to your device concurrently via the 'Limit downlads' setting, which also applies to device synchronisation. However, the 'Limit Rate' setting in the 'Progress' tab has no effect on synchronisation speed.
If the 'Create playlists on device' option is enabled, gPodder will create playlists on your filesystem-based media player during each sync. One playlist is created per channel. The playlist is created in date order, so that the playlist will always start at the oldest episode and end at the newest. As new episodes are synced to the player, they are automatically added to the playlist. If you delete an episode from within gPodder, it is removed from the playlist.
If you have the 'Create playlists on device' option enabled, you can also enable the option 'Remove episodes deleted on device from gPodder'.
When this feature is enabled, users can delete episodes from gPodder by deleting them from their media player and then performing a sync with gPodder. gPodder uses the m3u playlist to track what episodes were synchronised to the device.
With this feature enabled, if you deleted episodes from your device and then synchronise again, gPodder will present you with a list of deleted episodes. You can choose which of these episodes you wish tot delete - all, none or some.
- Any episodes that you choose not to delete will not be deleted on from gPodder, but will not be restored to your player. In order to sync them back to your player, you will then need to disable this feature from Devices Preferences and those episodes will be copied back at the next synch.
If 'Remove episodes deleted on device from gPodder' is not enabled, any episodes deleted from the device will be copied back over during the next sync. You will instead have to manually delete episodes from within gPodder itself.
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 workaround to this is to include the {episode.sortdate} data. Multiple fields can be concatenated, e.g.: "{episode.sortdate}_{episode.basename}" which will result in files of the form "2012-01-14_podcast.mp3".
For podcasts that release multiple episodes on the same day, even this might not be enough. Try also {episode.sortdate}_{episode.title}, or even {episode.sortdate}_{episode.published}
Both playlist creation and the ability to remove episodes from gPodder by deleting them from the device will work with custom file names enabled.
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.
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:
If you want to use a proxy for gPodder, but don't want to use a proxy for other applications, you can create a short shell script:
#!/bin/sh export http_proxy=http://username:password@hostname:port gpodder
There might be some problems with feeds (see the related bug report) - to fix it, you can try to use Yahoo Pipes:
See a screenshot of the pipe source to get an idea of how it should look like.
If you have got problems with episode downloads, please follow the instructions on the page about reporting download problems.
Making playback slower or faster is generally called time stretching. There are certain algorithms that maintain the original pitch so that you're favorite podcast speaker doesn't sound like donald duck after being processed. 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 {}
#
# (1) 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"
# (2) process file with soundstretch
# soundstretch "$1.wav" "$1.fast.wav" -tempo=+45
# (3) encode mp3 file
# lame --preset fast medium "$1.fast.wav" "$1.2.mp3"
# (1) & (2) & (3) can get a huge performance improvement through using pipelining
# because no disk I/O and no temporary wave file is used between input and output
lame --quiet --decode "$1" - | soundstretch stdin stdout -tempo=+45 | lame --quiet --preset fast medium - "$1.2.mp3"
# copy id3 tags from old file
id3cp "$1" "$1.2.mp3"
# 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
Time Stretching on Windows
The following batch file can be used
for time stretching on Windows (instead of the above two bash scripts).
Note that this batch file deletes the
original MP3 file (replacing it with the stretched version),
it does not copy any MP3 tags to the new file (so all tags will be lost),
and soundstretch and lame must be installed.
Name this file speedup.bat and
set cmd_download_complete to point to this file.
In gPodder 2.14, there seems to be a problem with cmd_download_complete that causes every other download to fail when using this script. If you run into this problem, consider using the script below instead ("Alternate Time Stretching on Windows").
REM speedup.bat - script for making mp3 playback faster with soundstretch REM soundstretch and lame must be installed first. REM deletes the original .mp3 and replaces it with the processed version REM does not copy any tags from the original .mp3 to the processed version REM exit if it's not an .mp3 set FILE=%GPODDER_EPISODE_FILENAME% if not %FILE:~-3%==mp3 exit REM decode mp3 to wav file lame --decode "%FILE%" "%FILE%.wav" REM process file with soundstretch soundstretch "%FILE%.wav" "%FILE%.fast.wav" -tempo=+50 -speech REM encode mp3 file lame --preset standard "%FILE%.fast.wav" "%FILE%.2.mp3" REM clean up - delete original .mp3, replace with processed .mp3 del "%FILE%" del "%FILE%.wav" del "%FILE%.fast.wav" move "%FILE%.2.mp3" "%FILE%"
Alternate Time Stretching on Windows
This alternate time stretching script will time-stretch EVERY .mp3 file in your gPodder downloads folder - so this script is only useful if you listen to (and delete) all the .mp3 files in your downloads folder, before you download more files.
This can be used as a stand-alone program, and in theory it can be used with cmd_all_downloads_complete (but in gPodder 2.14, there seems to be a problem with cmd_all_downloads_complete that causes this script to get started multiple times). If you have a slower system and you don't want this script to take over the CPU, consider starting the script with priority /LOW using the START command.
As with the script above, this batch file deletes the
original MP3 file (replacing it with the stretched version),
it does not copy any MP3 tags to the new file (so all tags will be lost),
and soundstretch and lame must be installed first. In the script, replace C:\gPodder\gpodder-2.14-win32\downloads with the path to your gPodder downloads folder.
REM Time-stretches EVERY .mp3 file in your gPodder downloads folder! REM Soundstretch and lame must be installed first. REM Deletes the original .mp3 and replaces it with the processed version. REM Does not copy any tags from the original .mp3 to the processed version. REM Replace C:\gPodder\gpodder-2.14-win32\downloads with REM the path to your gPodder downloads folder before running! for /R "C:\gPodder\gpodder-2.14-win32\downloads" %%F in (*.mp3) do ( REM decode mp3 to wav file lame --decode "%%F" "%%F.wav" REM process file with soundstretch soundstretch "%%F.wav" "%%F.fast.wav" -tempo=+50 -speech REM encode mp3 file lame --preset standard "%%F.fast.wav" "%%F.2.mp3" REM clean up (delete original .mp3, replace with processed .mp3) del "%%F" del "%%F.wav" del "%%F.fast.wav" move "%%F.2.mp3" "%%F" )
To change the download directory or gPodder Home, you can set one (or both) of these two environment variables:
GPODDER_HOME: Downloads will be saved in the folder "Downloads" inside the new Home folder you set
GPODDER_DOWNLOAD_DIR: Downloads will be saved directly in the folder you specify (which does not have to be in the gPodder Home folder)
There are various ways of setting these variables, depending on your distro/operating system and on the version of gPodder you are using.
Here are the default download folder locations:
If $GPODDER_HOME is not set, it defaults to ~/gPodder/. The settings and database files will always be stored in $GPODDER_HOME.
With gPodder 3.3.0 in Ubuntu (at least 12.10), you can't change the environment variables for gPodder Home and for the download directory through Preferences > Edit config (see bug 1718). One thing you can do instead is this:
gedit ~/.pam_environment
A text file will open up (it could well be empty). Add one or two of the following lines (depending on whether you want to change both these variables or just one):
Read more on persistent environment variables in Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables#Persistent_environment_variables
This section applies to gPodder 2 on Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 only.
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.
Here are the default download folder locations:
See the support page for an overview of current problems, links to self-help resources and other support options (mailing lists, IRC, etc...).