Media RSS: integration with the Video Elephant service

Basic concepts

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it is one of the XML programming languages. RSS provides information from various Internet sources in the form of a feed, channel, or any other format using special software. This format allows the user to create their own news feed from the selected sources and to view it online on their device.

MRSS (Media Really Simple Syndication), which was originally developed by Yahoo, is a RSS module, which is used to distribute multimedia files (audio, video, or images) in RSS feeds.

Media RSS can be used, for example, in podcasting, where this format is used as a means to deliver audio files to media players. MRSS allows companies, publishers, and bloggers to distribute a wider variety of content than is possible through standard RSS feeds.

Why Media RSS?

Of course, there are various ways to transfer files. MRSS is one of the most convenient ways to search for, view, and download content from media portals. The main advantage of using MRSS is its ability to quickly index video through support from the leading search engines (Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Bing, etc.) regardless of whether you store media files on your server or use a video hosting service. This significantly reduces the time needed to search for and post-process files.

Integration of MRSS with the VideoElephant service

The VideoElephant portal, which distributes premium video, needed to create a channel for the transmission of media files to users that allowed them to be subsequently indexed on the network. Let us consider the detailed algorithm for Media RSS that is used to implement this task.

The URL address of MRSS for VideoElephant will look something like this:

https://mrss.videoelephant.com/feeds/mrss/04dQB8hY6LAE/index.xml

To use MRSS we must have different Java or RSS libraries that provide subsequent parsing of the missing elements. The Java libraries are collections of classes. If you need access to any of these classes when programming, then you will need to find and connect to the appropriate library. The com.sun.syndication library, which is better known as the Rome project, is used to generate and parse RSS feeds.

Getting MRSS via the rome-tools library:

    
      FeedFetcherCache feedInfoCache = HashMapFeedInfoCache.getInstance();
      FeedFetcher feedFetcher = new HttpURLFeedFetcher( feedInfoCache );
      SyndFeed feed = feedFetcher.retrieveFeed( new URL(
      “https://mrss.videoelephant.com/feeds/mrss/{channelId}/index.xml
      “ ) );
      // do something with feed result
    
  

Thus, we get the following algorithm:

    
      <rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" version="2.0" >
      <channel>
      <title>
      <![CDATA[ VideoElephant ]]>
      </title>
      <link>/feeds</link>
      <description>
      <![CDATA[ VideoElephant MRSS Feed ]]>
      </description>
      <pubDate>2016-02-16 08:50:08 </pubDate>
      <item>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">fa13d16b07c922ac8d318b8da447d56a</guid>
      <title>
      <![CDATA[ How to in 60 Seconds Hair Styles: Bunny Buns ]]>
      </title>
      <description>
      <![CDATA[
      In this episode of How to in 60 Seconds Hair Styles, learn how to do bunny buns.
      ]]>
      </description>
      <pubDate>2016-01-14 10:23:15 </pubDate>
      <category>
      <![CDATA[ news ]]>
      </category>
      <enclosure url="https://s3.amazonaws.com/ve1/c314986c053cb7f4de805655db809c74.mp4" type="video/mp4"/>
      <media:content type="video/mp4" url="https://s3.amazonaws.com/ve1/c314986c053cb7f4de805655db809c74.mp4" duration="64">
      <media:category>
      <![CDATA[ news ]]>
      </media:category>
      <media:tags>
      <![CDATA[
      fashion,news,hair,hairstyle,News,how to,Fashion,Hair,Beauty,Style,18-25,26-40,41-65,Zoomin,Zoom,In,bun,Rated-G,Rated-U,News and Events,Bunny Buns,Buns
      ]]>
      </media:tags>
      <media:keywords>
      <![CDATA[
      fashion,news,hair,hairstyle,News,how to,Fashion,Hair,Beauty,Style,18-25,26-40,41-65,Zoomin,Zoom,In,bun,Rated-G,Rated-U,News and Events,Bunny Buns,Buns
      ]]>
      </media:keywords>
      <media:thumbnail url="https://ve1.s3.amazonaws.com/thumbnails/30562c0f4b711a58ba87ac2e58b4fd60/903a754d23dcb0e841caf67811a8bd07/903a754d23dcb0e841caf67811a8bd07-1280x720.png"/>
      <media:credit role="producer" scheme="urn:ebu">
      <![CDATA[ Zoomin TV ]]>
      </media:credit >
      </media:content>
      </item>
      </channel>
      </rss>
    
  

The main element in the provided solution is <media: content>, which may contain the URL address of the content as well as additional metadata (such as the size or format of the file). In some cases, the <media: content> may be missing the URL address and instead contains the nested element <media: player url = "http://www.foo.com/player?id=1111/>. This allows media files to access the media player console in the browser.

Conclusion

As we can see, creating a channel using Media RSS does not require a large amount of resources. MRSS provides a convenient standard for obtaining and downloading content from media portals.