Icecast - Aug 2005 - overlaying prerecorded content over a live stream...

Hello everyone!

I've been looking into using icecast to help get some terrestrial  
radio stations into Internet broadcasting.  One of their requirements  
is that they have the ability to overlay internet-only content over  
the regional commercials that they run during their programming - ie,  
during breaks between their normal programming, they don't want ads  
from their advertisers going out over the internet, but rather, they  
would prefer to substitute special content.

I could see doing this by having a fallback stream loop continuous  
internet only content and switching over to the stream during  
commercial breaks by terminating the main stream but that would seem  
not to be the optimal solution due to a clash with how I planned to  
introduce redundancy into the system (by having two machines onsite,  
each encoding the live stream from the boards realtime and relaying  
to two geographically distinct icecast servers, each set up as  
fallbacks for the other).

Has anybody here had to deal with a similar problem and/or have  
suggestions for the best way in which to proceed?

Thank you very much for your help.
--
Michael Hale                <smiley@gift-culture.org>
gift culture:                http://www.gift-culture.org
initstring:                    http://www.initstring.org
artificial music machine:        http://www.artificialmusicmachine.com

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At 02:12 PM 8/22/2005, you wrote:
>Hello everyone!
>
>I've been looking into using icecast to help get some terrestrial radio 
>stations into Internet broadcasting.  One of their requirements is that 
>they have the ability to overlay internet-only content over the regional 
>commercials that they run during their programming - ie, during breaks 
>between their normal programming, they don't want ads from their 
>advertisers going out over the internet, but rather, they would prefer to 
>substitute special content.
>
>I could see doing this by having a fallback stream loop continuous 
>internet only content and switching over to the stream during commercial 
>breaks by terminating the main stream but that would seem not to be the 
>optimal solution due to a clash with how I planned to introduce redundancy 
>into the system (by having two machines onsite, each encoding the live 
>stream from the boards realtime and relaying to two geographically 
>distinct icecast servers, each set up as fallbacks for the other).
>
>Has anybody here had to deal with a similar problem and/or have 
>suggestions for the best way in which to proceed?
the only other way I could think this could be done would be to hook in at 
the source client level.  Your source client which is encoding from your 
live feed would need to be modified to either be signalled, or poll for an 
event that would be used to switch to your alternate content (which could 
either be local files or even a relay of a different stream).  You would 
then have another signal which would cause the source client to go back to 
the original feed.  Either way, this would require some modifications to an 
existing source client (or writing your own) as well as something to 
generate the "signals".  EZstream might be a good start as it can be
fed a
raw stream (via stdin) and is *relatively* simple, so modification wouldn't 
be too terrible... anyway, that's the way I'd do it.. :)

oddsock

On Aug 22, 2005, at 2:43 PM, oddsock wrote:
>  EZstream might be a good start as it can be fed a raw stream (via  
> stdin) and is *relatively* simple, so modification wouldn't be too  
> terrible... anyway, that's the way I'd do it.. :)
>
> oddsock
>
Thanks, oddsock, I'll look into this.

One more question:  I'm sorry if I missed this in the documentation,  
but is there any easy way to transparently fall over to another  
server/mountpoint if the maximum listener count has been reached?
--
Michael Hale                <smiley@gift-culture.org>
gift culture:                http://www.gift-culture.org
initstring:                    http://www.initstring.org
artificial music machine:        http://www.artificialmusicmachine.com

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Michael Hale wrote:
> One of their requirements is that they have the ability to
> overlay internet-only content over the regional commercials that
> they run during their programming - ie, during breaks between
> their normal programming, they don't want ads from their advertisers
> going out over the internet, but rather, they would prefer to
> substitute special content.
This really is very similar to the application that I posted a couple 
questions over the weekend about.  But I decided that it was best to 
have the main programming actually be the fallback content (which could 
have a second layer of fallback) and overlay the specialized 
programming as if it were the primary.  And I do think that EZstream 
would be a good choice since you would likely have all of your internet 
programming pre-recorded.

I have tested this concept and it works very smoothly if the MP3 
encoding of the EZstream material is at the same rate as the main 
content stream.

The only catch seems to be terminating the EZstream at the end of the 
file.  It repeats and I don't want that.  I have to Ctrl-C to kill the 
overlay.

As it turns out, I might have to solve this for also inserting live 
material besides the pre-recorded stuff.  I have regional RF repeaters 
that need their own local content that will override material pulled 
from a satelite network.

Dick

----------
Dick Trump
Triad AV Services
515-243-2125
515-243-2055 (fax)
dtrump1@triadav.com