Question
Is there a possibilty to make my SRT assets appear as well in the RSS feed to conform with podcastindex.org specs, listed here? Basically it should be extended like this:
Sidenote
I know I can tweak the templates in the backend of podlove publisher. Thus I could change the template for a single episode. But: I’m restricted to alter the content of <content:encoded> and not other elements in my <item>. Or am I missing something?
So you want to add an x-subrip tag to the feed? You cannot do this through templates, as you said already. You need to modify the plug-in code to achieve this.
yes, I want a x-subrip to appear in my RSS feed. It would be very convenient, if I had a checkbox in the asset settings, which would say “show as transcript in RSS feed” when I create a new caption asset.
Is there maybe a way of filtering the generation of the RSS feed via my functions.php instead of modifying the plug-in code (which is not a viable solution as this would definitly break after an update)? [PS: I already searched the docs, but I was not able to find anything about hooks or filters]
Ok, for my case I found a solution for this. I created a function, that reads my SRT asset from the episode and adds it to the feed, if it is available for this specific episode.
Maybe this is useful for for people coming across this in the future:
/* SRT in Feed rendern
* ---------------------------------- */
function add_podcast_transcript_to_feed() {
$episode = \Podlove\get_episode();
if ($episode->file('srt')) {
echo '<podcast:transcript url="' . $episode->file('srt')->publicUrl('feed') . '" type="application/x-subrip"/>';
}
}
add_action('rss2_item', 'add_podcast_transcript_to_feed');
IMPORTANT: be sure to change the asset identifier srt to your use case (whatever you named the template-identifier in the wordpress backend).
Did you get your transcipts to appear on PodcastAddict? Because I tried it and it doesn’t work. According to RSS Namespace Extension for Podcast Transcripts they seem to support not only plain text and SRT but JSON as well. I’ve added SRT to my feed, cleared caches both in Wordpress and on my app in PodcastAddict, but transcripts don’t appear. Maybe it takes a little longer to show up?
Edith says: did a bit of testing and added of of the Buzzcast HTML transcripts to one of mine and … TADA … PodcastAddict shows a transcript. It’s wrong, of course, because it’s their file but the HTML version works.
Bottom line: I believe the app has a bug. They claim to support transcripts in various formats when in fact they only support HTML.
Edith again: the link to the doc is to Buzz Sprout, but it’s linked from the PA Changelog Page. That’s why I thought it’s related to the app but it does not have to be.
Edith’s final word: After contacting the developer and doing more testings, I’ve figured it out. First of all, you need to enable the Transcript feature in the player settings of the app to make the transcript appear on the player during playback. Then it shows SRT transcripts.
Second, if you want to have a transcript button to appear on the episode overview page you also need to supply the file as text/plain. This can be any format but if you want to use the format that Buzz Sprout uses in their Buzzcast episodes, then you need to supply HTML which uses the cite tag to structure the text. So for, I wasn’t able to find any converter that would spit out such formated text. So normal plain text needs to be enough at this point.
@gNNY this is exactly what I also found out after more testing. Podcast Addict has 2 ways of handling transcripts/closed captions. I think, this is a little bit confusing at first (but actually it makes sense, because not everyone wants to read the live transcripts while listening to an episode).
But actually I did not manage to show the SRT captions in Podcast Addict (as live closed captions), which are linked in my feed. At first I thought it was a problem on my end, but the buzzsproutpodcast (Buzzcast) doesn’t show the closed captions either. (It has a “transcript” button in every episode which just shows the text/plain as you mentioned).
But when I check my feed with another app (e.g. podverse or podcast guru) the closed captions / live subtitles are shown correctly.
Question: @gNNY How did you manage to show up the SRT in Podcast Addict? Can you post your podcast feed, so I can have a look on what’s the difference? Would be great! (this is my feed, if you want to have a look: letztens.de).
did you enable the Transcript feature in the player? In the app, you need to go into the settings, then Player and there you find the Transcript feature. When turned on, it will display the text over the cover.
By the way, I just tried the beta version of the app in the PlayStore and that one already supports WebVTT transcripts. My feed can be found at Binners Comic Club. Only the latest episode has SRT transcript, most of the rest only have WebVTT files.
Your captions also show up in the beta with the Transcript feature enabled.
WebVTT support is supposed to come in the next version which is in beta, the developer doesn’t know yet when he will release it, he told me.
Do you know of any other apps that only support SRT?
Yes, I enabled the transcript in the settings. But I only found one switch for that. Am I missing another one?
Awesome, this is good to hear.
Actually no, I only know of apps that support JSON and WEBVTT (as supported/visible automatically in PodlovePublisher) and additionally SRT. Would be interesting to know, which of the formats are preferred by each app. You could check this list for a lot of apps: Podcast Apps - Podcasting 2.0
Sidenote: I checked our feeds inside of some other apps (podverse, podcast Guru) and everything shows up as closed captions / live subtitles.
Maybe you need to reload the app or your feed? When I did my tests, I deleted the app’s cache and memory before going to my feed. And Podcast Addict seems to take a bit of time, a few seconds and sometimes after a second it this try until it recognizes the transcript.
Thanks @gNNY – I listen to a lot of podcasts in PodcastAddict (it’s my main podcast app). so actually it would be quite inconvenient for me to delete the storage & cache.
But if you managed to show the live subtitles of our episodes, then everybody else should also be able to show them now
).
