Icecast - Feb 2006 - guideline for plug-in to icecast2 server

thanks alot Geoff by the way is there any possible ways to add plug-in to
icecast2 server to stream Wma? regardless of the license problem

-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Shang [mailto:geoff@hitsandpieces.net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 8:08 PM
To: Neo Jiun Siang - R&D
Cc: icecast@xiph.org; njsalan@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: [Icecast] guideline for plug-in to icecast2 server


Neo Jiun Siang - R&D wrote:
> 	actually im trying to add feature to ices2 to able to stream mix
> 	file format such as ogg and mp3 in the same playlist.m3u without
> 	extra decoding and encoding that function like ezstream. the reason
> 	i dont want to use ezstream as source client becoz after going thru
> 	decoding and encoding, the audio quality drops. Therefore im trying
> 	to find out is there any easy way out to add plug-in to ices2 such
> 	as it has the feature of ices0 too please adivse thank you
What you want to do can't be done.  You can't have Ogg Vorbis and MP3
audio
in the same stream.  The reason is simple.  Once you start listening to a 
stream, the decoder for that format is launched and decodes the stream. 
there is no opportunity for the opening of another decoder to decode 
another codec.

You could end the current stream and start another, but the player would 
have to know what to do when the first stream ended so it could pick up the 
second one.  And since some players are not intelligent enough to look at 
the MIME type, not all players would cope with just being put on repeat.

I guess it could be done if someone decided to implement MP3 in Ogg, but I 
doubt that anyone's interested in doing that.  And then you'd need a
player
which would be able to play it.

If you don't want to reencode at all, rerip your audio as all one format or 
the other and use either Ices or EZStream to send it.  Otherwise you'll 
have to reencode on the fly.  Sorry, but they are your only two options as 
far as I can see it.

Geoff.


.

Neo Jiun Siang - R&D wrote:
> thanks alot Geoff by the way is there any possible ways to add plug-in to 
> icecast2 server to stream Wma? regardless of the license problem
Well, for starters, I think the "license problem" would be a major
issue in
trying to do this.  But apart from that, Windows Media streaming uses its 
own proprietory protocol (mms).  So someone would have to implement that 
before you could do anything else.

As far as I know, there are no unix programs at all that can do anything 
with Windows Media apart from decode it, and I doubt there's anyone 
interested in developing any.

Geoff.