Feeds¶

Scheme¶

Feeds are requested with the key of a channel and the optional key of a transcoding template.

http://content.bitsontherun.com/feeds/CHANNEL-TEMPLATE.rss

Here’s an example of both a feed without and with template. If the template is not specified, all videos in the feed will be embedded using the mobile MP4 version:

• http://content.bitsontherun.com/feeds/Hilgq9Ju.rss
• http://content.bitsontherun.com/feeds/Hilgq9Ju-1Lq5Mnwq.rss

Parameters¶

CHANNEL

An 8 character code (e.g. 9ke9KW4b) that uniquely identifies the channel. You can request it through the /channels/ API Class or find it in the playlist details page in the Dashboard.

TEMPLATE

An 8 character code that uniquely identifies a transcoding template. The template contains settings for dimensions, codecs and quality that are applied to a video when it is converted. You can request templates through the /accounts/templates/ API Class. You can also find them in the account page of the Dashboard. Templates are be the same across all your videos.

When no template is provided, the contentserver will return a feed with the highest quality MP4 that is available for each video.

Format¶

Here’s an example feed as served by the contentserver:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"
  xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
<channel>
  <title>Animations</title>
  <link>http://www.blender.org</link>
  <description>A lineup of all the Blender videos.</description>
  <image>
    <url>http://thumbs.bitsontherun.com/LasfrJ72-120.jpg</url>
    <title>Animations</title>
    <link>http://www.blender.org</link>
  </image>
  <itunes:keywords>animation</itunes:keywords>
  <itunes:image href="http://thumbs.bitsontherun.com/LasfrJ72-720.jpg" />

  <item>
    <title>Big Buck Bunny</title>
    <link>http://bigbuckbunny.org</link>
    <description>
      Big Buck Bunny is a short animated film by the Blender Institute,
      part of the Blender Foundation. Like the previous film Elephants Dream,
      the film is made using free and open source software.
    </description>
    <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:00:00 -0000</pubDate>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">ntPYsD4L</guid>
    <enclosure url="http://content.bitsontherun.com/videos/ntPYsD4L-1ahmry41.mp4"
      length="10215139" type="video/mp4" />
    <itunes:duration>596</itunes:duration>
    <itunes:keywords>preview, blender, orange, animation</itunes:keywords>
    <media:content url="http://content.bitsontherun.com/videos/ntPYsD4L-1ahmry41.mp4"
      fileSize="102715139" type="video/mp4" duration="596">
      <media:thumbnail url="http://content.bitsontherun.com/thumbs/ntPYsD4L-720.jpg" />
      <media:player url="http://bigbuckbunny.org" />
      <media:keywords>preview, blender, orange, animation</media:keywords>
    </media:content>
  </item>

</channel>
</rss>

All the properties on the channel level can be set in the channel details page in the Dashboard. All the properties on the item level can be set in the video details pages in the Dashboard. There’s a few exceptions:

itunes:keywords

This element in the channel is an aggregation of the keywords (tags) of all included videos.

guid

The guid of an RSS item is the KEY of the video.

Compatibility¶

Feeds are returned as UTF8 XML files, fully complying to the RSS specifications and validated by the W3C feed validator. They should be compatible with any feed reader out there. Most readers have enclosure support, which enables them to display the videos inline. Specifically, the following systems are supported:

• Media players such as iTunes, Miro and Boxee.
• Search engines such as Google, Blinkx and Yahoo.
• RSS readers such as Bloglines, NetNewsWire and SharpReader.

DNS Masking¶

The domain name used for requesting a feed will be propagated in the return. This means the links to videos, thumbs and players inside that feed will contain that same domain name and not content.bitsontherun.com