- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I listen to a lot of podcasts. I spend a pile of time where I need something to distract me and keep me awake, and I also just like podcasts. But there’s a lot of podcasts, especially from sources like IHeartRadio, that have scads of annoying ads (mainly for other podcasts, which seems weird, but OK).
I had gotten to the point where subscriptions like Behind the Bastards just weren’t worth listening to because the ads went on for like 5 minutes. I had to come up with something or drop them.
Enter Pinchflat. You can create a “Podcast” media source profile that’s audio-only, and respects Sponsorblock. If you have a podcast that has a Youtube channel, you can pretty much eliminate ads this way. And Pinchflat makes an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your favorite app like Antennapod to consume that feed. One thing I like to add to the Media Profile is to redownload after a day or two so it updates the Sponsorblock info that might not have existed if Pinchflat grabs the episode when it’s very fresh.
Links:
Pinchflat Docker compose setup
Podcast RSS feeds (Ignore the reverse proxy if you already use an always-on VPN like Wireguard/tailscale or download your episodes while on your LAN)
The heroes at Sponsorblock and the other heroes that contribute timeblock entries
Donate on behalf of Pinchflat to Zakkarry, a collaborator that the developer of Pinchflat has identified as a good donation target, as well as the EFF.
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But there’s a lot of podcasts, especially from sources like IHeartRadio, that have scads of annoying ads
And they’re so repetitive. And each block is the same length if I’m not mistaken. This could even be automated - not relying on human input - or at least half-automated.
It should be doable to so some audio analysis of the episodes. They “always” (I am sure some forget every now and then), have an outro and intro around the ad block. With a clearly defined jingle per podcast. You should be able to make a program that analyses the audio and listens for that block and cuts it out for you.
I had found one that used Whisper to convert the podcast to text and then ran it through an AI to find the ad text, but I couldn’t get it to work. I had considered building something myself and was about halfway through that when I found this method. It does the job better than I think an AI would considering it’s crowdsourced for the ad identification.
Does this get rid of ad-reads as well or is it just the ads served by YouTube?
Sponsorblock will strip out ad-reads.
Keep in mind that if it fetches an episode immediately after it’s posted, nobody will have had a chance to make Sponsorblock entries, hence my advice to have it re-fetch after a couple days. By then, someone should have made contributions that you can take advantage of.
Also, be sure you have the correct Sponsorblock content types selected in your “Podcast” Media Profile. You might have to play around with the options in there to make it produce exactly what you want from it.
I don’t know anything about this beyond what’s written in the post, but it sounds like if a podcast episode on YouTube has been properly sporsorblocked, then it should skip ad reads as well (keep in mind that sponsorblock is crowd-sourced, it doesn’t automatically work it’s magic)
this sounds great. thanks for the tip!
I think I already have pinchflat. Didn’t know sponsorblock worked for podcasts. Thanks!
Seeing your VPN to Albania also works. Online advertising is banned there.
Thisis a great tip! Wanted to check out pincheflat anyway, great weekend project 😁
This is what ive been doing for about a year and I love it.
Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me? You owe me 10 minutes per episode back for the last year.
