Hi Everyone,
Our station successfully migrated from Airtime 2.5.1 to Libretime this past weekend. So far, so good. I’m really enjoying feeling out the auto-populate from playlist feature, among other things.
We do have some minor issues with podcasts… there is at least one that is not downloading despite our best efforts, but there are enough posts out there that I can track that down soon enough.
My question is in regards to the time at which libretime checks RSS feeds for new episodes… Is it possible to set that time of day? For example, Democracy Now! is made available at or before 9AM PST… and we play it at noon PST. Is there a way to auto force Libretime to check the RSS and download the new episode prior to 11PST, so that it can be auto-included in the block at noon? Yesterday, I fear that it only worked because I forced the import by touching the podcast at 10AM PST. Today I left it alone and discovered that despite the podcast knowing of the new episode, it hadn’t downloaded yet.
Great to hear you had a successful migration. As far as when it downloads, that isn’t currently configurable. It should be something like every hour it queries for new episodes on the RSS and downloads them. I’d have to check the code to be sure but I think it a good rule of thumb would be if a show is updated 2 hours before it airs via autoplaylist then it shouldn’t be an issue.
I can’t say for sure though without pulling up the code and double checking what triggers it.
Thanks for the info! That might make this a bug report then. For more than one podcast now, I’ve had to manually instigate the import… but not for all of them. I can verify without a doubt, though (unless a log proves me otherwise) that it doesn’t work quite as you explain. At least for a daily podcast. ? Anyhow…
If there is a log I can check, please let me know. I’m keen to solve this, and to suggest that the epoch of download for a regular podcast be configurable - at least that way the user knows for sure that a check on the RSS was made.
Hi All,
Thanks for the quick reply, and for the code ref. I’ve checked and checked again, so I’m afraid that this is now a bug report.
Democracy Now! uploads their newest episode usually shortly after 0900h EST (despite the timestamp in the RSS being incorrect and reporting 0900h GMT). This means that it’s up before 0700h PST (where we live) and we play it at 1200h PST from an automated playlist. Since I have configured the DN! podcast and auto playlist, I have had to intervene and force the import prior to the autoplaylist populating the block (which according to the docs should happen at 1100h PST). When I edit the podcast, the new episode always shows up immediately, and when I select it to be imported, it downloads immediately, so there don’t seem to be any issues with the RSS or the mechanism. As I noted, the timestamp of the in the RSS reads 0900GMT for some reason, but I can’t imagine that’s throwing anything off.
If I’m doing something wrong or missing something, I’d be happy to try to figure that out with some guidance from the group. Otherwise, I’m hoping to help solve this problem. The podcasts that I have configured that are released weekly have had no issues so far. But this daily one I would love to figure out as it is going to potentially be a pain to have to intervene every day.
Hi folks, we are trialing Libretime for community radio automation. Is this feature (setting time of day podcast download) still being considered? We have a program that uploads about 45 minutes before we replay, so far Libretime hasn’t been reliable in grabbing and scheduling the program. Being able to automate tit would be extremely helpful, thanks.
Hey Rob,
We should connect some time, it’s been a while!
We have been using Libretime and it has been rock solid with that feature. Do you have the latest version?