Icecast - Oct 2007 - What's best practice for serving multiple formats from a remote icecast server?

We are running an icecast2 server in conjunction with our LPFM radio 
station and need a little advice.

We have been serving a single 128k ogg stream from a remote server and 
would like to make additional formats available (e.g. mp3, lower 
bandwidth, etc.)

I would think this has been done a few thousand times and there would be 
a "best practice" but I can't find it.

Our basic configuration is this: Darkice streams from our studio to 
icecast which is running on a server farm. Our transmitter (miles away 
from our studio) subscribes to this stream for its audio source. And the 
stream is available to the public for streaming also.

We would like to add an mp3 stream (reluctantly) and a low-bandwidth 
stream (probably mp3 also) for dial-up listeners.

Since our icecast server is on a server farm, I figure the encoding of 
the additional streams should be done there.

So the simplest solution (I figger) would be to run a source client on 
the server that can subscribe to the ogg stream, decode and reencode it 
into the desired additional formats, and then feed them back to 
additional mount points on icecast.

Does that pass the sanity test?

What's the best way to do this?

More specifically, is there a source client that can
a) subscribe to a stream as a source
b) output multiple formats and multiple streams to icecast

Darkice. The only source client I have used is darkice. It looks like it 
does not decode but it can encode multiple streams. Can I use jack to 
subscribe to the base ogg stream and then feed it to darkice?

Ezstream. It looks like ezstream does both decoding and encoding. Can it 
be configued to use a stream (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8000/stream.ogg) as 
input?

If not, I see that it allows stdin input. Could I simply pipe a stream 
(using something like wget http://127.0.0.1:8000/stream.ogg) into ezstream?

But it looks like ezstream cannot output multiple streams. Is it good 
practice to run multiple instances?

Savonet/Liquidsoap. According to its web site 
(http://savonet.sourceforge.net/wiki/Liquidsoap), it can fill the bill, 
accepting network streams and outputting multiple formats.

MuSE. Likwise, MuSE claims to accept network streams and output multiple 
streams. http://muse.dyne.org/?info=description

Which way should I go?

Thanks!

John

John Hicks schrieb:
> We are running an icecast2 server in conjunction with our LPFM radio 
> station and need a little advice.
>
> We have been serving a single 128k ogg stream from a remote server and 
> would like to make additional formats available (e.g. mp3, lower 
> bandwidth, etc.)
>
> I would think this has been done a few thousand times and there would 
> be a "best practice" but I can't find it.
>
> Our basic configuration is this: Darkice streams from our studio to 
> icecast which is running on a server farm. Our transmitter (miles away 
> from our studio) subscribes to this stream for its audio source. And 
> the stream is available to the public for streaming also.
>
> We would like to add an mp3 stream (reluctantly) and a low-bandwidth 
> stream (probably mp3 also) for dial-up listeners.
>
> Since our icecast server is on a server farm, I figure the encoding of 
> the additional streams should be done there.
>
> So the simplest solution (I figger) would be to run a source client on 
> the server that can subscribe to the ogg stream, decode and reencode 
> it into the desired additional formats, and then feed them back to 
> additional mount points on icecast.
>
> Does that pass the sanity test?
>
> What's the best way to do this?
>
> More specifically, is there a source client that can
> a) subscribe to a stream as a source
> b) output multiple formats and multiple streams to icecast
You might want to check out ezstream and streamTranscoder.
The first of both is more flexible and reported to be far more stable.

Cheers

Thomas

Hi John,

On Tue, 2007-10-30 at 00:50 -0500, John Hicks wrote:
> What's the best way to do this?
> 
> More specifically, is there a source client that can
> a) subscribe to a stream as a source
> b) output multiple formats and multiple streams to icecast
> 
> Darkice. The only source client I have used is darkice. It looks like it 
> does not decode but it can encode multiple streams. Can I use jack to 
> subscribe to the base ogg stream and then feed it to darkice?
> 
> Ezstream. It looks like ezstream does both decoding and encoding. Can it 
> be configued to use a stream (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8000/stream.ogg) as 
> input?
> 
> If not, I see that it allows stdin input. Could I simply pipe a stream 
> (using something like wget http://127.0.0.1:8000/stream.ogg) into ezstream?
> 
> But it looks like ezstream cannot output multiple streams. Is it good 
> practice to run multiple instances?
> 
> Savonet/Liquidsoap. According to its web site 
> (http://savonet.sourceforge.net/wiki/Liquidsoap), it can fill the bill, 
> accepting network streams and outputting multiple formats.
> 
> MuSE. Likwise, MuSE claims to accept network streams and output multiple 
> streams. http://muse.dyne.org/?info=description
> 
> Which way should I go?
I don't know which is the best way, but I had always a good  choice with
StreamTranscoderV3 http://www.oddsock.org/tools/streamTranscoderV3/ it
does exactly what you want and can possibly run automated on the server!
if you'd need help with config, drop a mail :)

regards,
kloschi

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John Hicks wrote:
> So the simplest solution (I figger) would be to run a source client on the 
> server that can subscribe to the ogg stream, decode and reencode it into
the
> desired additional formats, and then feed them back to additional mount 
> points on icecast.
>
> Does that pass the sanity test?
Yes it does.

My recommendation is streamTranscoder V3. 
http://www.oddsock.org/tools/streamTranscoderV3

In my experience, it is more stable than the 1.x series and you can output 
multiple streams for the one input source.

It is a bit cryptic to set up as there appears to be no documentation. 
However, I posted setup instructions to this list which will hopefully be 
helpful.  http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast/2006-February/010295.html

I use it regularly in a production environment, so am happy to answer any 
questions.

Geoff.

Hi,

John Hicks wrote:
> We have been serving a single 128k ogg stream from a remote server and
> would like to make additional formats available (e.g. mp3, lower
> bandwidth, etc.)
> 
> Savonet/Liquidsoap. According to its web site
> (http://savonet.sourceforge.net/wiki/Liquidsoap), it can fill the bill,
> accepting network streams and outputting multiple formats.
If you want, there is an example of transcoding on the wiki on

http://savonet.sourceforge.net/wiki/LiqExamples

It's only a few lines of code and it's quite stable (I know radios that
use liquidsoap in production to transcode their stream without any problem).

Cheers,

Samuel.