Publishing RSS Feeds for Webisode

v1.7 July 02, 2007

Webisode parses RSS feeds in the format defined by the RSS 2.0 specification (www.rssboard.org/rss-specification). Webisode uses the various tags in an RSS feed to determine what episode information shows up in the user interface, and also to assist in sorting and retaining content items. When publishing for Webisode, please bear in mind that our goal is to provide the user with a simple means of downloading and viewing content. We have designed this guide to make it easy for you, the content publisher, to display content in a manner that Webisode can use while still maintaining an appropriate user experience. Deviating from this specification may make your content difficult to view and download in Webisode, therefore following these guidelines will provide you with the best means for distribution.

Webisode can subscribe to both RSS Video and RSS Torrent feeds. Webisode also downloads user selected content from the RSS feeds. In order for Webisode to be able to download your content, your feed must contain a link directly to the content object and the object must meet certain standards. With this in mind, please publish all feeds as follows:

RSS Channel Elements

Currently, Webisode supports the basic required elements of an RSS channel. As such Webisode will only display the following information:

<title> element
This is the name of the channel or feed. It's how people will refer to your list of available content. For example, you could put the name of your website as the title for the channel.

<link> element
The link tag can be the URL to your website.

<description> element
This element contains a basic description of your channel and its contents to let users know what you are all about.

Sample feed code:

<title>Robovision Networks</title> <link>http://www.robovision.com</link> <description>Thisfeed is all the great programming from Robovision and their star robot, Robbie. Tune in to this feed to access all Robbie's great new adventures.</description>

RSS Item Elements

In the RSS feed, each file must have its own item tag. For example:

<item> <title>The Robbie Robot Show - More Than a Machine S03E01 720p English</title> <enclosure url="http://client.webisode.com/robbie-s3e01.torrent" length="58242" type="application/x-bittorrent"/> <description>In this episode, Robbie gets himself into a whacky situation with the lawn mower</description> <category>COM</category> <pubDate> Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:46:46 +0200</pubDate> </item>

While there are many additional item elements available, Webisode currently uses only the following:

<title> element
The name of the episode is always found in the title tag of the RSS feed. Webisode parses the information found in the title tag in order to help sort and list available content in the Webisode UI. In order for your content to list properly in Webisode, you should adhere to the following format in your <title>.

For the format of a movie or one-time video:

<title>Name of video - quality language</title>

For example:

<title>The Amazing Robby Robot - 1080i ENG</title>

For the format of an episode of a series:

<title>Name of Series - Title of Episode S##E## Quality Language</title>

For example:

<title>The Robbie Robot Show - More Than a Machine S03E01 720p ENG</title>

S is the season number
E is the episode number

Quality can be one of the following:

SD - Standard Definition (320x240 interlaced) up to 480 lines
480i - High definition 480 interlaced
480p - High definition 480 progressive scan
720i - High definition 720 interlaced
720p - High definition 720 progressive scan
1080i - High definition 1080 interlaced
1080p - High definition 1080 progressive scan
HD - Generic HD designation
LOW - Less than SD resolution (less than 320x240 interlaced)

Language abbreviations should conform to the ISO 639.2 standard. A full list is available at: www.loc.gov

Some common abbreviations are as follows:

ENG - English
SPA - Spanish
GER - German
ITA - Italian
FRN - French
JAP - Japanese
KOR - Korean
CHI - Chinese

<enclosure> element
The <enclosure> tag is used to specify the file associated with the item. There are three attributes required in this element.

URL designates where the file is located
Length designates how big it is in bytes
Type designates what its type is

For the type attribute use "application/x-bittorrent" for torrent files and "video/*" for non-torrent video file. For non-torrent downloads, the following file types are supported by default within Webisode: avi, mpg, mpeg, mov, mp4, m4v, wmv, rm

<description> element
For Webisode use, the description must be non-HTML and contain a text (multi-byte ascii) description of the show.

<description>In this episode, Robbie gets himself into a whacky situation with the lawn mower</description>

<category> element
Use the category element to identify the genre of the material being published:

<category>Comedy</category>

Webisode supports the following genres:

Comedy - Includes Comedy / Mature Animation / Satire
Drama - Also includes Romance
Sci-Fi - Also includes Fantasy
Action - Includes Adventure / Crime / Mystery / War / Western
Nonfiction - Includes Documentary / History / Biography / Short
Family - Includes Family / Kids / Teen / Children�s Animation
Reality TV - Includes Game Show / Reality-TV / Talk-Show / Courtroom
News - Includes Sports / Political
Adult - Includes mature audience only material

NOTE: Multiple <category> elements will be discarded and Webisode will use only the first instance.

<pubDate> element
Its value is a date, indicating when the item was published. Webisode currently uses this element for date sorting only and will not hold back content if a future date is specified.

For more information:

Contact Webisode directly at info@webisode.com or log on to our forums at Webisode.com/forums