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Know-How Community, I have a podcatcher dilemma--and hey, you all like to catch some podcasts, ri...

G+_John Mink

By G+_John Mink,
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G+_John Mink Newbie

G+_John Mink

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Know-How Community, I have a podcatcher dilemma--and hey, you all like to catch some podcasts, right?  Surely you can help ;)

 

TL-DR:

What's the best way to keep two podcatcher libraries (all machines are on a LAN) in sync so that I don't need to redownload huge video files per each?

 

 

 

Full Version:

 

We're all podcast fans here, and i'm no exception.  My problem is that I'm a sucker for video (the higher quality the better) instead of audio; yet when you get long high quality video podcasts (like TWiET for a blatant appeal to Padre example) they can be well over a GB, and take an absurd amount of time to download (come on Google Fiber!)

 

I'd rather not wait to finish downloading a podcast to watch it, especially if it was posted several hours earlier!  The problem is that my desktop is off when i'm not in front of it (eg: asleep or at work) so obviously it can't do the downloading itself.

 

As it happens, I've got a headless linux box (a 'server') that I keep online & running 24/7 which could easily download the podcasts when they become available.  The problem is that I want to be able to manage my podcasts on the machine I sit in front of, not the one that's always on & doing the downloading.

 

Ideally i'm trying to keep the downloading tool on my server as light as possible, as it's not exactly a top of the line machine but that's only a preference.  Any suggestions on how I can manage my podcasts on one machine and download them on another, yet not have duplicate copies of the podcasts?

 

All recommendations & advice are appreciated!  I hope I'm not the only one with this problem...but my Google searching seems to indicate that I very well may be!

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G+_John Mink Newbie

G+_John Mink

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610bob that's exactly what i'm currently doing!

 

Well almost.  It's actually even more jenky because I have a podcatcher on my server using a 'sync point' (on a NAS).  But this syncing is actually a manual process...so I need to VNC into my server, tell it to sync, and then I can watch them over the network share.

 

So yeah, it technically works but it's super jenky and requires far too much manual  interaction on my poor little server :(

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G+_John Mink Newbie

G+_John Mink

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facepalm I just realized something that should have been obvious....if I have two podcatchers (one on the server, one on the desktop) then I can use the interface on the desktop to mark which podcasts are finished.

 

All this requires is two podcatchers which can sync the list of played items.  I don't really need to track progress, but I wouldn't complain about such features.  Just the ability to keep the list of played items in sync.

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G+_610GARAGE Newbie

G+_610GARAGE

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The podcacher that I use is gPodder. Looking at it's files, it looks like it uses an sqllite database to keep track of videos, and a json file to keep track of settings. So if you could trick the two gPodders into looking at the same sql file, it should work. The only problem is that one of the programs could lock the file, making it un-editable for the other one.

 

http://gpodder.org/

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G+_John Mink Newbie

G+_John Mink

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Hmm, a simple iNotify script could take care of that. Each time one changes I replace the old one and move the old one to a backup location.

 

but i'd be concerned that they're not making a database call on every update, but rather using a cache or something I can't touch.

 

Also, I'm not entirely sure if this is "less jenky" :p

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