Icecast - Aug 2004 - AW: AW: final question: how many mountpoints can icecast handle ?

Hello Michael

damn, I was afraid of that, but thanks for lightening me up 
(although I am in complete darkness now, after having seen 
the light just some days ago..)

I'm looking into http streaming of the static files just now,
but I came to find that there is one huge drawback:

1. when sending the stream out with icecast/shoutcast 
   it would be possible to "push" the next song in, even 
   let the user influence this so that he could act like 
   when playing a CD, so he could go on to the next song etc 
   and request specific songs from his playlist. 

   Unfortunately, as it turned out, icecast is thought to 
   send a FEW source-streams to MANY users. What I want to do is send 
   ONE source-stream to ONE user, so it will be as many source streams 
   as there will be users.

2. When using http streaming, sending ONE static mp3 file to one user 
   works fine, apache can handle many such streams, but the user
   could then just have ONE file sent, then select the next and play it 
   etc -> so its again a computer-thing, no stereo-like interface that 
   even my mum could use when connected to the internet to look for songs, 
   add to playlist and let them be played by a continous stream.

Please excuse my ignorance but I don't know about a way to 
do such a thing to have a way to interact with the stream.

Anybody ?

best regards,

Andrew
> -----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
> Von: owner-icecast@xiph.org [mailto:owner-icecast@xiph.org]Im Auftrag
> von Michael Smith
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 7. November 2001 11:50
> An: icecast@xiph.org
> Betreff: Re: AW: [icecast] final question: how many mountpoints can
> icecast handle ?
> 
> 
> 
> >So problem is, if I wanted to handle, say 1000 streams,
> >I would need 200 Servers..this puts the concept a bit 
> >in jeopardy because that would push the cost of the service 
> >into astronomical..in comparison to handling, as I had planned 
> >until now, 500 individual streams per server.
> 
> Well, your calculations are a bit off here to begin with - the numbers
> here give 20 (or more) servers, not 200 or more. 
> 
> >
> >So I guess I'll have to wait until Icecast 2 for doing 
> >a real prototype of this.
> >
> >Just so that I get this right - if I have 1000 different on-demand 
> >streams (its on-demand radio from huge mp3-library for users) 
> >mountpoints are definitly the way to go, yes ? Or am I on 
> the woodpath ?
> 
> Really, you're on completely the wrong path here - there's a simple
> way to do this. Remember: icecast just serves content over 
> HTTP. If all
> you want to do is serve a static mp3 library to individual 
> users, seperately,
> then a web server (such as apache) is much better suited to 
> your needs.
> 
> This isn't to suggest that icecast CAN'T do this, but it 
> isn't really the
> most sensible approach.
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
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Hi,

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Andreas Gunzenhauser wrote:
> damn, I was afraid of that, but thanks for lightening me up 
> (although I am in complete darkness now, after having seen 
> the light just some days ago..)
> 
> I'm looking into http streaming of the static files just now,
> but I came to find that there is one huge drawback:
> 
> 1. when sending the stream out with icecast/shoutcast 
>    it would be possible to "push" the next song in, even 
>    let the user influence this so that he could act like 
>    when playing a CD, so he could go on to the next song etc 
>    and request specific songs from his playlist. 
> 
>    Unfortunately, as it turned out, icecast is thought to 
>    send a FEW source-streams to MANY users. What I want to do is send 
>    ONE source-stream to ONE user, so it will be as many source streams 
>    as there will be users.
Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but what I'd do if I were you would be
to
allow people to generate their own playlist with a cgi script (or php or
whatever) of some sort picking songs in your database, then let their mp3
tool (be it xmms, mpg123, winamp, itunes, realplayer) play this playlist.
This way you'll not need any source to your icecast server and a single
server could handle most of the load, if not all. 

Provided your icecast server's name is "yourserver" and it listens
on port
8000, then just take a look at http://yourserver:8000/playlist.pls output
and do the same from your cgi script (launched through Apache) with a cgi
output like this one : 

--- CUT ---
[playlist]

NumberOfEntries=3
File1=http://yourserver:8000/file/songs/song1.mp3
File2=http://yourserver:8000/file/songs/song2.mp3
File3=http://yourserver:8000/file/songs/song3.mp3
--- CUT ---

provided you set the correct content-type in your cgi output this playlist
would be played automatically (sorry I don't know what it must be, maybe
something like audio/x-mpegurl but not sure)

Now the difficult part is to allow the people to browse your database to
construct their own playlist, but you know better than me how to do.

wouldn't it solve your problem ?

Jerome Alet

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On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Jerome Alet wrote:
> provided you set the correct content-type in your cgi output this playlist
> would be played automatically (sorry I don't know what it must be,
maybe
> something like audio/x-mpegurl but not sure)
I've just verified in icecast 1.3.11 sources, it's
"audio/x-scpls", and a
hand made playlist seem to work fine, you can go back and forth in it no
problem, so the cgi/php/whatever thing should work fine.

hth.

Jerome Alet

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