Proposal: <podcast:trailer>

[KieranMcKeefery]

I've briefly touched on this with both @jamescridland and @tomrossi7 but I think there could be something in trailers, having trailers in the items block is great amongst episodes but I've come across a few occasions where trailers drop off of shows because they've got a limit of say 300 and they hit episode 301, boom the trailer is gone.

Now we can fix it of course by pinning the episode to the RSS at all times and removing the last episode but that does feel like a hacky way to do it.

What could we potentially do for trailers/pinned episodes inside RSS feeds? I'm not here to bloat RSS feeds by any means but I feel like we could do something better.

[daveajones]

@KieranMcKeefery There is wording for a single <podcast:alternateEnclosure> to live in the Channel to provide something like this. Thoughts?

I know the name "alternateEnclosure" doesn't fit for this application. But, RFSM: "It totally doesn't matter what we call it. We can learn to use anything. There are more important things to spend time on." :-)

[staceygoers]

Food for thought: There's an argument for letting the feed support both 1 trailer to define the show, and various trailers.

A pod can release a new trailer for each new season, for example. However, a non-seasonal show could also just have 1 trailer they always want to feature.

Not proposing a solution, here, though. ;/

[theDanielJLewis]

That's great to point out! We do already have that in the iTunes namespace with the use of episode type, episode number, and season number. So I agree with Stacey that we need to ensure whatever we do supports that same level of flexibility, if not more.

[daveajones]

What are we thinking here? A <podcast:trailer> tag in the channel to start with as a proposal? If so, I can write it up for phase 2 and we can start banging on it.

[daveajones]

Or maybe @KieranMcKeefery wants to write it up?

[theDanielJLewis]

I recommend innovating on Apple's foundation. They use <itunes:episodeType>, which is far more versatile than creating more tags. At least at the <item> level.

I suppose we could have a <channel>-level trailer tag of some sort, but that seems a bit redundant since you can do the same thing with the items, and there's precedence for that among several apps. The only benefit I can see to a non-episode trailer tag would be giving the ability to have a podcast trailer without showing that trailer in the feed.

[staceygoers]

+1

[swschilke]

Could we consider adding some addition information for a trailer? Like a language tag? I would love to have trailer in several languages (even if my content is only in one language).

.

[daveajones]

I’m down with that. Adding a language attribute seems appropriate to me.

[jamescridland]

Do we not have one in the RSS spec anyway?

How likely is the use-case that the trailer would be in a different language to the podcast it describes?

[KieranMcKeefery]

Or maybe @KieranMcKeefery wants to write it up?

Sorry @daveajones I'm not sure how I missed this - feel free to write it up.

I think we continue to use Apple's trailer tag for the seasonal approach but I think this is more channel specific

[Inrumpo]

I've come across a few occasions where trailers drop off of shows because they've got a limit of say 300 and they hit episode 301, boom the trailer is gone.

Paged feeds, as discussed in #117, would eliminate the need for a feed limit. That trailer at position 1 would always be there. This would not provide as much functionality as a trailer tag of some sort, but it might solve the described problem of trailers (and episodes) getting "chopped off" at the bottom end of a feed.

[daveajones]

@KieranMcKeefery What do you think about the way I wrote up the trailer tag in the README under the phase 3 section? Can you guys work with that structure?

[daveajones]

@staceygoers Would the tie-in with podcast:season work for you guys as well?

[staceygoers]

That seems sharp! It could be even cooler if apps DID display multiple seasonal trailers, so that if a user wanted to "taste" the trailers for season 1/2/3, they could. But it's likely the default of pub:date makes sense.

LMK if that was not the section you wanted me to dive into ... :)

[KieranMcKeefery]

@KieranMcKeefery What do you think about the way I wrote up the trailer tag in the README under the phase 3 section? Can you guys work with that structure?

We can work with that for sure, looks great.

[daveajones]

Anyone else have thoughts or concerns about this tag? If not, I think it's ready to finalize. It's a fairly simple structure.

[daveajones]

I'm finalizing this tag. Barring any changes between now and 6/1/21 it will be formalized into the namespace.