Hello again No replies regarding memory requirements! I have an idea to provide 1000's of streams without the requirement of 100's of source PC's, and perhaps without even requiring Icecast at all. But I'm not sure if this will work. We will have thousands of 24 hour playlists generated everyday by software I'm developing. If we encode all our audio files at 32kb/s, could we not just supply a link to the playlist files directly on our server. So in effect, our server is just acting like a hard disk and listeners are playing the files directly. Would this work? What I also envisage is writing software that continually trims songs from the top of the playlists as time goes by throughout the day so new listeners will start listening at roughly the scheduled time. The only problem I can think of is file security. Is there any way to prevent the individual songs from being downloaded? As an alternative, am I right in assuming IceCast is capable of providing streams directly from playlist files? Is there any other major advantages of using Icecast compared to the direct access method above? Thanks for you time. Ross Levis. --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ icecast project homepage: http://www.icecast.org/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'icecast-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
On Monday 10 March 2003 15:47, Ross Levis wrote:> Hello again > > No replies regarding memory requirements! > > I have an idea to provide 1000's of streams without the requirement of > 100's of source PC's, and perhaps without even requiring Icecast at all. > But I'm not sure if this will work. > > We will have thousands of 24 hour playlists generated everyday by > software I'm developing. If we encode all our audio files at 32kb/s, > could we not just supply a link to the playlist files directly on our > server. So in effect, our server is just acting like a hard disk and > listeners are playing the files directly. Would this work?Yes. There are two possibilities here: either run them as normal streams, or use the file serving functionality in icecast. As normal streams, you'd just tell your source client (assuming you're using one which is capable - ices can do this, as can many others) to send the preencoded files. For file serving, you don't get rate control or anything like that - icecast does this, but in this case is acting just like a normal web server (though the implementation means that it'll be better than something like apache for serving thousands of simultaneous clients). However, there are highly-optimised web servers that can do better still. You lose all the advantages of icecast by taking this approach, but it is simple to run.> > What I also envisage is writing software that continually trims songs > from the top of the playlists as time goes by throughout the day so new > listeners will start listening at roughly the scheduled time. The only > problem I can think of is file security. Is there any way to prevent > the individual songs from being downloaded?No. This is what 'no rate control' means in the previous sentence. You can't easily or reliably prevent this from happening> > As an alternative, am I right in assuming IceCast is capable of > providing streams directly from playlist files? Is there any other > major advantages of using Icecast compared to the direct access method > above? >As described above - yes. The advantages are that you can get various statistics on client connections (though much of the admin interface is imcomplete, there's quite a bit there in one form or another), rate control, automatic dropping of clients which can't read the stream fast enough, etc. Mike --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ icecast project homepage: http://www.icecast.org/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'icecast-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
> > We will have thousands of 24 hour playlists generated everyday by > software I'm developing. If we encode all our audio files at 32kb/s, > could we not just supply a link to the playlist files directly on our > server. So in effect, our server is just acting like a hard disk and > listeners are playing the files directly. Would this work?you mean you have a pool of .ogg/.mp3 files ( perhaps an open po0l with personal folders, etc ) . and you want to generate a playlist to a select few or more of these files .. so that a listener will tune in at a certain time, and listen to whichever types of songs you've decided for that time . you don't want to do live simulcast sh0ws , correct? .. just offer 24-7 music ( which will change depending on the time ) . you don't want to have actual radio shows w/ song intro's , etc . . this you can certainly do . instead of having icecast generate the .m3u file , you could do this through php . for instance ,, if you listen to a stream on http://theDV8network.com , you'll notice a counter index and the source ip in the .m3u - basically ;i'm tracking this info in sql , and then generating a custom playlist file in the icecast webro0t dir . i then have a webpage with a meta http refresher to load the custom m3u file . o your website/proggie can definately generate a playlist on the fly . it would be more difficult to alter the playlist in real-time however .. though i'm sure it could be managed . <p>>> What I also envisage is writing software that continually trims songs > from the top of the playlists as time goes by throughout the day so new > listeners will start listening at roughly the scheduled time. The only > problem I can think of is file security. Is there any way to prevent > the individual songs from being downloaded?if you have all the songs registered in a database , you could have an already played index to track this ; and generate a rand0m song list and filter out those tracks already played . and have different logics for the different time of day . ,and i don't think the streams CAN be downloaded if the links are .m3u . but i'm sure someone else can say more on this . (i'm told that winamp does have a ripper plugin ).> > As an alternative, am I right in assuming IceCast is capable of > providing streams directly from playlist files? Is there any other > major advantages of using Icecast compared to the direct access method > above?if you're not live encoding , icecast prolly still has performance advantages over other on-demand streamers ( mod_mp3 for apache ,etc ).. but icecast also supports ogg vorbis which is a superior audio format on a number of measures . <p> a:/, --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ icecast project homepage: http://www.icecast.org/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'icecast-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
Adon Irani wrote:>you mean you have a pool of .ogg/.mp3 files ( perhaps an open po0l with >personal folders, etc ) . and you want to generate a playlist to a select >few or more of these files .. so that a listener will tune in at a certain >time, and listen to whichever types of songs you've decided for that time > >Basically, yes.>you don't want to do live simulcast sh0ws , correct? .. just offer 24-7 >music ( which will change depending on the time ) . you don't want to have >actual radio shows w/ song intro's , etc . . >That is correct, however, there will be song intro's etc because they will be pre-recorded as audio files.>this you can certainly do . instead of having icecast generate the .m3u >file , you could do this through php . >Ideally, yes. However, I will be writing a standalone Windows app to generate the m3u's on a daily basis.>if you have all the songs registered in a database , you could have an >already played index to track this ; and generate a rand0m song list and >filter out those tracks already played . and have different logics for the >different time of day . > >I can't go into details but the song selection won't be random. They will all be pre-selected manually by lots of DJ's and sent to the main server. My app will be combining lots of 2 hour shows into different playlists for different streams.>if you're not live encoding , icecast prolly still has performance >advantages over other on-demand streamers >That's nice to know, however, I was talking about the alternative of not using a streamer at all. ie. The M3U's look like a local playlist with each audio file specified in it. However, this would provide easy downloads if anyone looked at the m3u so I don't think we will go this way. I still need to know quite urgently if IceCast can provide a stream from a pre-built M3U playlist file or not. Is this possible? Thanks, Ross Levis. <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ icecast project homepage: http://www.icecast.org/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'icecast-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.