Consuming videos as audio-only podcast

PeerTube
1

I’ve been experimenting a bit with Peertube videos as podcast. Specifically, I wanted to see if I could get an audio-only version of a video.

I’ve tried 2 podcast apps for Android, AntennaPod and PodAura.

AntennaPod defaults to video, which of course is not strange as it is a video, but has the possibility to swich to audio only. However, for videos with split audio and video stream, there’s no sound in either playback mode.

With PodAura, it’s only possible to play the full video, and I get sound, even with split audio/video.

For both apps, the whole video experience is very quirky, especially if you want to navigate in the video. It’s quite clear that video playback isn’t the main priority.

I guess all or most of these problems are on the app side of things, but is it any possibilities to better the experience from the Peertube side? I’m thinking mostly of the possibility to consume videos as audio-only.

2 Likes
2

Hello,

What podcast feed URL do you use?

3

The one I get using « Subscribe via Podcast Feed »: Riksantikvaren

1 Like
4

Use this URL instead: Riksantikvaren

There is a bug with the URL you got from the subscribe button, that will be fixed in the next version.

1 Like
5

Thanks. However, this link actually made it slightly worse. Now, the videos with split audio/video don’t work at all in either apps. Also, I’m unable to navigate in the videos in AntennaPod.

6

Yes we have another bug where the audio file is broken, that will be fixed in the next version.

1 Like
7

I use Antennapod and both feeds work fine, so the problem may be on your end.

8

Well, I can’t see what may be different on my end, other than a different version of AntennaPod. My is 3.8.0. There are not many ways to add the URL or to start playback. And with the URL Chocobozzz wrote, I get this error message for videos with split audio/video: Atom size less than header length (unsuported). (contentIsMalformed=false, dataType=1).

9

AntennaPod doesn’t support our audio file format. We’ll see how we can fix it. (VLC supports it)

10

Not trying to contradict your experience, just trying to help diagnose.

1 Like
12

I just tested this again, having upgraded to the latest version, and I’m glad to see that audio-only playback works both in AntennaPod and PodAura. That’s great.

However, I noticed there is a problem when I try to fast forward. That doesn’t work, and it also makes the playback go back to start.

13

The fast-forward issue was circumvented by enabling web video transcoding (Generate audio file optimized for podcasts · Issue #7236 · Chocobozzz/PeerTube · GitHub), and I began to feel confident in recommending this to others. But first I wanted to test this with some apps “normal people” are using, since I don’t believe most people use AntennaPod. Turns out that two of the most popular podcast apps on Google Play, have problems using the podcast url from Peertube.

  1. Podcast Player from Castbox.FM: Gives an error message: Incorrect URL.
  2. Podcast Addict: Manages to open the URL, but not to fetch any content. Clicking on the entry sends me to the webpage.

I guess this tells more about the state of podcast apps than it does about Peertube, but it’s unfortunate that it is like this.

14

If you manage to find what are the errors from these apps, please create issues on GitHub - Chocobozzz/PeerTube: ActivityPub-federated video streaming platform using P2P directly in your web browser so we can fix them :slight_smile:

1 Like
15

I tried once more (after exposing the email, ref. Podcast "URL is incorrect" - #7 par zxc ) with the Podcast Addict app, and I get the following error message:

Last update failed: 14.11.2025 - 11:11 For input string: “283483.40369247727

I can’t find that string in the xml.

However, I tried once before this as well, and then I found the string in the error message in podcast:alternateEnclosure bitrate.

16

Thank you, this should be fixed by Fix bitrate format · Chocobozzz/PeerTube@bc19e94 · GitHub

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