TWIT Plugin - Is it working?

[manny 14]

Hi,

 

Is the TWIT Plugin working? The thumbs are there but no content :-(

 

Thanks

[Luke 42077]

I wonder if something about Twit has changed and the channel needs updating.

[thedrjones 1]

Apologies for Thread necromancy, but this was the ideal post to add this too.

 

The current version of the TWiT plugin in github does have a problem when obtaining podcast information from the TWiT RSS format used at the moment, so seem not to be able to see the episodes. This seems to mainly be because there are exceptions being raised when it's trying to convert the pubDate in the RSS feed, which now includes the timezone identifier and Convert.ToDateTime(string) doesn't seem to handle that well. The URL seems to be best picked up from another part too, to get the raw video file.

 

I've an experimental version of the code in my GitHub, which I've compiled into a plugin on my install and it seems to work for most of the feeds which are active on the network now (the GizWiz was pulled from TWiT a while ago, so does not match how TWiT produces it's RSS). That experimental version also removes the HTML tags from the summary (using a very basic regex.replace to pull out the HTML tags) and displays the preview frame in the RSS feed, if we have one.

 

My C# is a little rusty these days so understand if you don't want to use it exactly, but feel free to use my changes as inspiration if an Emby dev wants to update the plugin in the future.

Edited January 24, 2019 by thedrjones

[Luke 42077]

That's great, thanks ! Does media play?

[thedrjones 1]

That's great, thanks ! Does media play?

 

Yep, the media plays fine when I've changed the ChannelMediaInfo.Path for each item in the RSS XML.

 

Originally this was pointed to /item/link (e.g https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/701). When using a browser, this seems to just go to a web page now.

I changed it to look at /item/enclosure instead (e.g. http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp4/cdn.twit.tv/video/twit/twit0701/twit0701_h264m_1280x720_1872.mp4), which makes it play fine.

Edited January 25, 2019 by thedrjones

[csadoian 36]

Is @@thedrjones modification to the Twit plugin integrated into the version available in Emby?  If not, how does one go about integrating his modification into one's local server?

 

I listen to Twit podcasts quite often and it would be nice if Emby's Twit plugin actually worked 

 

As of today it is not working for me.  It displays the various shows, but when you click on one you get nothing.

 

Thanks.

[Scrufdog 3]

Still not working....

[jachin99 88]

They have an rss feed that is compatible with the podcasts plugin also. Just another option

Edited January 5, 2020 by jachin99

[Luke 42077]

They have an rss feed that is compatible with the podcasts plugin also. Just another option

 

If they have this then that would be a fantastic alternative. 

[csadoian 36]

They have an rss feed that is compatible with the podcasts plugin also. Just another option

I was aware of that and have tried the Podcast plugin in the past, but it has also given me trouble.  It's been a while since I tried it but I think it was either showing outdated podcasts or they wouldn't show up at all.  However, I just checked and the Podcasts seem to be working fine now.

 

Some of the feeds that I am using:

 

http://feeds.twit.tv/brickhouse_video_hd.xml

http://feeds.twit.tv/hn_video_hd.xml

http://feeds.twit.tv/mbw_video_hd.xml

http://feeds.twit.tv/ww_video_hd.xml

 

The TWIT RSS feeds are listed here:

 

https://twit.tv/subscribe

[jachin99 88]

There are a few good sites with feeds out there still. I had to look all over for these whein still used macrotube for wmc. I can find more and share them some time if anyone is interested. They're mostly technology related though.

[thedrjones 1]

Since the tweaking I did in my own fork of the Twit plugin to fiddle with the podcast feed a little, I have (very) recently started writing something using the API they mention on the twit website. It is limited to 5 calls in a minute, but you can get 25 podcasts in a call. To get 90 days worth of podcasts items can take a few minutes with a minute delay after every 5th call to deal with that restriction. I think they will extend it on request though. Obviously if asking for fewer days then you might get it in a minute or less.

 

Luckily most content collection is done with the internet sources scheduled task, so a user won't really see the delay anyway unless you've been refreshing constantly to test your API data collection code, which I have have been doing over the evenings in the week just gone.

 

I've not finished testing it yet, there are things on the config screen I need to tidy up first and I've only watched a couple of shows, but I will place it on my GitHub shortly if all is well. I think I may get it to use a smaller podcast icon image though. Using the 1200x1200 version is a little overkill when it will be displayed in a quarter of that real estate at best.

 

I'd also like to support the archived podcasts too and maybe have a link to get older than the defined period of episodes for one show, but I've only recently started dipping my toe into real Emby plugin land and not just hacking with one already working, so progress is not as quick as I'm learning while I go. I will admit to having borrowed some of the conventions from the other Emby plugins you can find in GitHub.

Edited January 6, 2020 by thedrjones

[Luke 42077]

As long as they're providing rss does the plugin even make sense anymore? It's a lot of additional development when the alternate is just importing a premade feed.

[jachin99 88]

It's just a thought and I haven't tested this myself but maybe content is easier to manipulate from a plugin i.e. if emby sees plugin content as a library endpoint but emby doesn't see an rss feed the same way then a plugin would be useful. I'm not sure if that is how it works but I remember having those kinds of issues with jriver. I had to download podcasts to add them to my library the way I liked to.