ytdl2rss 0.1.0

Create podcast RSS from youtube-dl info JSON.

Create podcast RSS of media downloaded from YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch or any other site supported by youtube-dl (or yt-dlc, yt-dlp, or other forks).

Introductory Example

To create an audio podcast from videos in GoogleTechTalks Make the Web Faster playlist:

youtube-dl --write-info-json --no-clean-info-json -f bestaudio https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE0E03DF19D90B5F4
ytdl2rss *.info.json >podcast.rss

Features

• Attempts to produce RSS which complies with guidelines from:

  • Apple

  • Spotify

  • W3C

Installation

This package can be installed using Python package managers (pip, pipx, uv, conda, pixi, etc.), in the usual ways. For example, by running:

pip install ytdl2rss

Or by saving src/ytdl2rss/__init__.py as ytdl2rss.py in $PATH and, on Unix-like platforms, making it executable (chmod +x ytdl2rss.py).

Recipes

Periodic Updates

A podcast can be periodically updated by running youtube-dl and ytdl2rss from cron. Using --download-archive is recommended. For example, to update the introductory example daily at 5 a.m., the following can be added to crontab:

0 5 * * * cd path/to/podcast && youtube-dl --download-archive ytdl-archive.txt --write-info-json --no-clean-info-json -f bestaudio https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE0E03DF19D90B5F4 && ytdl2rss *.info.json >|podcast.rss

Hosted Thumbnails

Episode thumbnail images can be hosted alongside downloaded media, so podcatchers will not download them from the original host, by using --write-thumbnail and modifying the .info.json files to use the downloaded thumbnails:

youtube-dl --write-info-json --no-clean-info-json --write-thumbnail -f bestaudio https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE0E03DF19D90B5F4
for info in *.info.json; do
    jq --arg t "${info%.info.json}.webp" '.thumbnail = $t' "$info" >"$info.new"
    mv -f "$info.new" "$info"
done
ytdl2rss *.info.json >podcast.rss

See contrib/ytdl-thumbnails.sh for an example that includes conversion from WebP to JPEG.

Podcast Metadata

In addition to JSON for individual videos, ytdl2rss accepts JSON for playlists (produced by youtube-dl --print-json for channel/playlist/user URLs). This can be used to define a podcast metadata not currently saved by youtube-dl, such as a description, thumbnail, and webpage URL. To combine info JSON into a playlist with custom metadata:

jq -s \
    --arg desc "My awesome podcast." \
    --arg thumb "channel_thumbnail.jpg" \
    --arg url "http://example.com/podcast-home.html" \
    '{
  _type: "playlist",
  entries: .,
  # Copy playlist metadata from info for first video
  id: .[0].playlist_id,
  title: .[0].playlist_title,
  uploader: .[0].playlist_uploader,
  uploader_id: .[0].playlist_uploader_id,
  # Add custom playlist metadata
  webpage_url: $url,
  description: $desc,
  thumbnail: $thumb
}' ./*.info.json | ytdl2rss - >|podcast.rss

See contrib/ytdl-playlist-meta.sh for an example which gets playlist metadata from Open Graph Metadata in the playlist HTML.

Documentation

The project documentation is hosted on Read the Docs. See the CLI documentation for command-line options and usage, and the API documentation for the Python API.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and appreciated! See the contributing guidelines for recommendations.

Alternatives

If you are looking for an all-in-one podcast media download, conversion, and hosting tool, you may be interested in:

• Podsync

• YouCast

License

This project is available under the terms of the Unlicense, like youtube-dl, yt-dlc, yt-dlp, or other forks. See the summary at TLDRLegal.