[icecast] on demand server

Jack Moffitt
2004-08-06T14:23:51Z

> > I am trying to set up a stream server for audio archives.
> > I've just tried Icecast2 / Ices, and it is really good stuff,
> > but I cannot yet get what I want : streaming on demand.
>
> Icecast isn't really designed for this. You could mount each
> file you want to host at a separate location and use individual
> ices instances to feed them on a continuous loop. That won't
> give you start-on-demand, but will make it possible to send
> everything through icecast.

Why can't you just use apache?  You just need a script that will
generate the playlist file to pass to the player when you click on an
"audio link".  There are many packages that set these up for you
automatically.  Search freshmeat.

Icecast is really only for radio-like streams.  Either you have a live
source, or you have a continuous non-live source.  For basic audio
streaming not of this type, Apache almost always works great.

> > The reason why I am not just putting some .m3u links on the webpage
and
> > let my apache server do the job is that I don't want users to
download
> > the file.
>
> People like to kid themselve about this, but I think you'll find
there's
> little difference. There's not a big gap between people knowlegeable
> enough to pull the download url out of the m3u file and paste it into
> their browser, and people knowlegable enough to pull the icecast url
> out of the m3u file and paste it into their browser.

Search freshmeat or versiontracker for the hundreds of 'stream-ripping'
programs.  Some of them are quite nice.

Why would you want to restrict people doing something that is perfectly
legal and normal to do? :)

In any case, Ralph has a point that it's trivial to cirvumvent all the
tech "solutions" to making streams unsavable.  Even the proprietary
solutions of this form like Apple's, Real's, and Microsoft's.

jack.