Icecast - Aug 2004 - Winamp Issues

I'm currently working on a streaming radio server that will be
streaming randomized archive shows 90% of the time and then live shows
10% of the time.  The solution I came up with was to have /main the
archive mountpoint and have a /live for the live shows.  What we want
to do is use the functionality of icecast's moveusers.xsl to move them
to the live at the specified time and have /live's fallback to be /main
to minimize dead air.  We've overcome the the issue with having users
come on to /main after the initial moveuser by just having a script to
move everyone over on a set interval during the live shows.  My problem
is that for some reason winamp and a few others don't respond properly
to this move.  MPlayer, xmms, and iTunes seem to handle it fine but
winamp will try to connect and eventually just stop playing.  Is this a
known issue and is there a known work around, and also does anyone have
a better idea move the users to a live stream and still maintain a way
to keep down dead air?

Christopher wrote:
> I'm currently working on a streaming radio server that will be
streaming
> randomized archive shows 90% of the time and then live shows 10% of the
> time.  The solution I came up with was to have /main the archive
> mountpoint and have a /live for the live shows.  What we want to do is
> use the functionality of icecast's moveusers.xsl to move them to the
> live at the specified time and have /live's fallback to be /main to
> minimize dead air.  We've overcome the the issue with having users come
> on to /main after the initial moveuser by just having a script to move
> everyone over on a set interval during the live shows.  My problem is
> that for some reason winamp and a few others don't respond properly to
> this move.  MPlayer, xmms, and iTunes seem to handle it fine but winamp
> will try to connect and eventually just stop playing.  Is this a known
> issue and is there a known work around, and also does anyone have a
> better idea move the users to a live stream and still maintain a way to
> keep down dead air?
One radio station setup I did only did live shows a few hours a day and
the rest of the time they wanted archive stuff playing.

I went through some of what you've described when I realised it would
just be much easier to have a python script running playing the archive
content outputting to the radio desk, whenever the live shows finished
they just faded up the channel with the archive output on.

This ment no changing about with the mountpoint and all the fiddling etc.

Stephen
Liveice Project

Hi:

To do what you want to do, I highly recommend using the current SVN icecast
code and use the fallback override functionality.  This means that whenever
someone connects to your live mount, anyone who is listening via that mount
and is currently hearing the backup will automatically be pulled forward
again to the live mount.  It's very nice.

To achieve this, just put the following in the mount config for your live
mount, in addition to what you already have:

<fallback-override>1</fallback-override>

Good luck!

Geoff.