True Anthem Video Feed (MRSS) Specification

True Anthem can automatically ingest video content from your publishing platform through an RSS/MRSS video feed. Once connected, this feed powers two things: the Content Discovery section of your Dashboard, and automated scheduling of video posts to social media.

This article is a reference guide for the technical team setting up or maintaining your video feed — typically a developer or CMS administrator.

Supported Feed Formats

True Anthem's video feeds are built on open, well-established syndication standards. Your feed should conform to one of the following:

• MRSS 1.5.1 Specification
• RSS 2.0 Specification
• Atom 1.0 Specification

How True Anthem Requests Your Feed

True Anthem uses two optional query-string parameters when requesting your feed. These help our system resume processing exactly where it left off after any downtime, rather than re-processing your entire feed every time.

• since — Returns items published, modified, or deleted on or after this datetime.
• until — Returns items published, modified, or deleted on or before this datetime.

Both values should be formatted per RFC 3339 or RFC 1123.

Example request URL:

https://www.example.org?since=2024-11-12T17:41:00Z

Making Feed Retrieval Efficient

To reduce unnecessary load, your feed server should support conditional GET via either an ETag or Last-Modified header:

• ETag: Lets True Anthem verify whether your feed content has changed before re-downloading it.
• Last-Modified: If ETags aren't available, this timestamp lets True Anthem check for new content instead.

Feed Elements Reference

Channel-Level Elements

Item-Level Elements

Customizing Social Copy with ta:social

ta:social is a True Anthem-specific element (defined in the https://www.trueanthem.com/feedspec namespace) that lets you specify exactly what text should be used when a piece of content is posted to social media. It applies to videos, links, and photos alike.

It takes an optional target attribute to scope the copy to a specific platform. Valid values are:

• facebook
• instagram
• linkedin
• pinterest
• threads
• tiktok
• x
• youtube
• bluesky

When deciding what text to use for an auto-scheduled post, True Anthem checks these sources in order:

1. User-Defined Post Copy (highest priority): If someone manually wrote post copy for that link or media asset in the Dashboard, that text always wins.
2. RSS-Based Post Copy: If no manual copy exists, True Anthem looks for a ta:social value matching the target platform. If none is found, it falls back to the untargeted ta:social value.
   • For links, this check happens on the ta:social inside item.
   • For media assets (like videos), this check happens on the ta:social inside media:content first — and if it's missing there, True Anthem falls back to the ta:social inside item, same as it would for a link.
3. Fallback: If nothing is found after all of that, True Anthem generates copy based on your preconfigured settings.

Example Feeds

RSS 2.0 Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:ta="https://www.trueanthem.com/feedspec/v1">
  <channel>
    <lastBuildDate>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <guid>77245c97-e996-4bdf-8c83-142a6965c65a</guid>
      <pubDate>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</pubDate>
      <dc:modified>2023-01-02T00:00:00Z</dc:modified>
      <ta:social>This is the default text for link posts.</ta:social>
      <ta:social target="facebook">This text will only be used for Facebook link posts.</ta:social>
      <media:content url="http://www.realpublisher.com/videos/major-event.mp4"
                     type="video/mp4" medium="video" isDefault="false"
                     expression="full" bitrate="128" framerate="25"
                     samplingrate="44.1" channels="2" duration="120"
                     height="720" width="1280" lang="en">
        <ta:social>This is the default text for video posts with this video.</ta:social>
        <ta:social target="threads">This text will only be used for posting this video to Threads.</ta:social>
        <media:title>Video Title</media:title>
        <media:description>Video Description</media:description>
      </media:content>
      <media:keywords>breaking, news, event</media:keywords>
      <media:status state="active" />
      <dc:available>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:available>
      <dc:valid>2023-12-31T23:59:59Z</dc:valid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <guid>3d8451ee-5602-47dd-9b92-a2d267b8b027</guid>
      <media:status state="deleted" />
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Atom 1.0 Support

True Anthem also accepts Atom 1.0 feeds for video ingestion. Most elements follow the same structure as RSS 2.0 — the table below covers only what's different.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:ta="https://www.trueanthem.com/feedspec/v1">
  <title>EXAMPLE FEED</title>
  <updated>2024-05-15T12:00:00Z</updated>
  <entry>
    <id>77245c97-e996-4bdf-8c83-142a6965c65a</id>
    <published>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <updated>2023-01-02T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <ta:social>This is the default text for link posts.</ta:social>
    <ta:social target="facebook">This text will only be used for Facebook link posts.</ta:social>
    <media:content url="http://www.realpublisher.com/videos/major-event.mp4"
                   type="video/mp4" medium="video" isDefault="false"
                   expression="full" bitrate="128" framerate="25"
                   samplingrate="44.1" channels="2" duration="120"
                   height="720" width="1280" lang="en">
      <ta:social>This is the default text for video posts with this video.</ta:social>
      <ta:social target="threads">This text will only be used for posting this video to Threads.</ta:social>
      <media:title>Video Title</media:title>
      <media:description>Video Description</media:description>
    </media:content>
    <media:keywords>breaking, news, event</media:keywords>
    <media:status state="active" />
    <dc:available>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:available>
    <dc:valid>2023-12-31T23:59:59Z</dc:valid>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>3d8451ee-5602-47dd-9b92-a2d267b8b027</id>
    <media:status state="deleted" />
  </entry>
</feed>

Supported Video Specifications by Platform

Each social platform has its own limits for video format, size, duration, and dimensions. True Anthem has only certified the specifications listed below — even if a platform technically supports more, videos outside these specs may not work correctly in the Dashboard, on the platform, or both.

*Instagram's API documents the limit as 1 GB, but consistently fails above ~200 MB in practice.
**Bluesky doesn't explicitly document supported codecs; these are inferred from common MP4/MOV usage.

Key Takeaways

Changelog

Questions about setting up or troubleshooting your video feed? Reach out to support@trueanthem.com.