I am looking for a dockerized podcast manager. I hacked an old version of gpodder-web into a container a couple of years ago but it is time to update to something more robust.
Perplexity gives some options and I am thinking podgrab but open to suggestions.
I admit that this doesn’t meet the dockerised/self-hosted requirements at all, but AntennaPod is excellent if you’re in the Android ecosystem. I only mention it because I realised 12-18 months ago that I’m realistically only ever listening to podcasts via my phone now days and therefore had no need to download for desktop use or store the files offline myself. On the rare occasion that I want to download a particular episode’s mp3 file I’ll grab straight from the source (e.g., Podbeam, Libsyn, etc.), the URL of which is freely available in AntennaPod.
Not dockerized, but I’ll throw it out there in case you’ve got a similar overall use case to me - FOSS, primarily Android listening, and occasional non-automated downloads on desktop.
Thanks Belfry, I guess I have a fairly unique use case.
I like PocketCasts on my android. I expect it’s much the same as AntennaPod. It has a web interface to add new podcasts and keeps track of where you up to in a podcast stream, which I guess is both good and bad. It’s what I use when driving, walking, mowing, etc.
However, I also watch a few hours of vodcasts each week. Most of these just involve talking heads but the visual component is very helpful on occasions. I quite like Security Now, Intelligent Machines, the Untitled Linux Show and This Week in Tech all on the twit.tv network.
gPodder is good at handling this format and used to have a web frontend but this was removed a few years ago. I tried some alternatives like mygpo but they were not an easy install and I have gone back to my gPodder hack running on an old debian docker container. It’s fiddly and a bit of a pain to maintain but it otherwise does exactly what I want.
Such is life.
Correct - it’s very similar. I’ve almost completely moved to AntennaPod (PocketCast Plus expires in October) and found it to be essentially identical for my use case. I started looking around after this catastrophe (the old “lifetime licence/account isn’t really a lifetime licence/account” play, with an eventual walking back by PocketCasts) and got serious finding an alternative after these and these sorts of shenanigans by the parent company, Automattic, last year.
That being said, AntennaPod doesn’t support video, nor does it suit desktop use, etc. I wonder whether something like GrayJay might suit your needs for video, if there’s a plugin that will pull from the twit.tv network. Otherwise, maybe a more generic RSS downloader might work too. I know nothing about this project, but a quick look at GitHub revealed Hitman which seems to handle RSS feeds (I saw an RSS link on the twit.tv website) and video downloads. Plug in something via the CLI, and receive the video as a file.
Again, not an answer to the specific problem (sorry!), but it could be another option to solve the problem in a different way. I had a brief search this afternoon and was honestly surprised at how little support for video podcasts there were in various products or projects.
Yesterday I ran up freshRSS in a docker container. It does audio and video podcasts, can cope with auth api keys (I support twit.tv through their subscription service) and works on laptop, mobile and TV.
It’s not perfect but it does a reasonable job of managing and updating the feeds and I can download episodes or just stream depending on my preference at the time.
It has some diagnostics, shortcut tools, stats and handles opml. I haven’t delved into all its nooks and crannies but it will probably be my replacement for gpodder.
It will also let you keep up with the latest topics and posts at HLB … and who wouldn’t want that!