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BBC Reopens Ogg Streams
garf writes: "Once again, back by popular demand, the BBC has opened up live streaming of Radio 4, to test with the new codecs, especially for modem users. Hop over here.
And for those wishing to listen to Radio 1 try these (link one),
(link two).
But beware: '[Radio 1 streams] are available sporadically at the moment. Don't be surprised if it cuts off, as I've probably just killed it ready for restarting with different settings.'
Please email support to the BBC for their continued support for the ogg format. Happy listening."
Even lame supports ogg coding through libogg.
merkac
Cool, but useless.
#! /bin/bash
/mnt/music/ogg/style/artist/album/track.ogg
# CD Ripper Script
# save tracks in
# Info
s=rock # style
n=11 # number of tracks
a=pink_floyd # artist
l=the_division_bell # album
d=1994 # date
t1=cluster_one.ogg
t2=what_do_you_want_from_me.ogg
t3=poles_apart.ogg
t4=marooned.ogg
t5=a_great_day_for_freedom.ogg
t6=wearing_the_inside_out.ogg
t7=take_it_back.ogg
t8=coming_back_to_life.ogg
t9=keep_talking.ogg
t10=lost_for_words.ogg
t11=high_hopes.ogg
# Directory management
music=/mnt/music/ogg
mkdir $music
cd $music
mkdir $s
cd $s
mkdir $a
cd $a
mkdir $l
cd $l
# CD Paranoia needs to search exhaustively for the SCSI-ATAPI CD-ROM, so use the -s switch
# Use -B (batch) mode to save each track in its own file
cdparanoia -s -B -- "1-$n"
# Compress with Ogg Vorbis
# This yields a compression ration of about 12 and sounds great when played with xmms
oggenc -o $t1 -a $a -l $l -d $d track01.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t2 -a $a -l $l -d $d track02.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t3 -a $a -l $l -d $d track03.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t4 -a $a -l $l -d $d track04.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t5 -a $a -l $l -d $d track05.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t6 -a $a -l $l -d $d track06.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t7 -a $a -l $l -d $d track07.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t8 -a $a -l $l -d $d track08.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t9 -a $a -l $l -d $d track09.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t10 -a $a -l $l -d $d track10.cdda.wav
oggenc -o $t11 -a $a -l $l -d $d track11.cdda.wav
# Cleanup
rm *.wav
Primary ogg-related feedback address: oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk
The BBC itself has a pretty extensive feedback gathering mechanism: here are online feedback forms you can fill out:
Feedback form about the BBC website/services
Feedback form about BBC Radio
BBC News suggestions form
But remember: you can gush all you want about the BBC's OGG decision--but I have a feeling the BBC is more interested in how many people are actually tuning in. The best way to get this to stay up is to really listen... and it's worth doing, especially if you're in the US and want 15% less state propaganda in your news. I don't just mean now, as long as this story is on the /. homepage, but next week, too...
I understand what you mean. Broadcasting in QuickTime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media on the net is like broadcasting on the waves in a secret format that can only be decoded by one brand of radio receiver.
But the "radio receiver" is given away for free? Well the "radio receiver" has strange buttons and features that some people can't stand, isn't compatible with your "car" (Operating System), could be tracking what you listen, etc. That doesn't make sense, does it? Well that's exactly what's happening right now with net radio.
The ogg format, by being documented, is the equivalent of plain radio: everyone can build a receiver.
The same is true for all of these encoders.
... anything above that is a bonus.
The fact is, AIFF is absolutely great for digital audio. 24bit, 96khz, overkill.
None of these formats are designed to do anything more than provide acceptable quality over low bandwidth connections.
In circumstances where bandwidth is not a concern, there are far better encoding methods than MP3, Ogg, WMA, etc.
Don't get too stuck on the concept of encoding - it's just a means of overcoming a lack of bandwidth, not an attempt at providing superlative audio quality, though that could be considered a secondary concern in the design.
As long as the audio quality is decent, and the filesizes are low, then the encoder is doing the job it was designed to do
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Radio 2 = Easy Listening music + speak
Radio 3 = Classical
Radio 4 = Speak (mostly high-brow stuff)
Radio 5 (live) = News and Sport coverage with phone-ins etc. Not as high brow as R4.
This is my sig.
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
Radio 1 The best new music (main stream crap music)
Radio 2 The nation's favourite (Crappy music, talk shows)
Radio 3 Live music and arts (Jazz and other 'wierd' music, talk shows)
Radio 4 Intelligent speech (LOTR Radio Play and the like, talk shows)
Radio 5 Live news - live sport
Radio Worldwide: News in 43 languages
Mlk
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
BBC radio is the same everywhere, with a little local content
Except for the 38 local staions in England and radios Scotland, alba, Wales Cymru Ulster and Foyle
The high quality stream has higher frequencies so you can easily hear the noise. The low quality stream clips this high frequency noise out. I actually prefer listening to the low quality stream.
Note that you need the latest Ogg release (RC3, download here) to play the streams; older versions didn't work for me. They seem to be using some features of Vorbis not available previously (e.g., the web page says, "I've decided to drop Radio 4 to a 32kHz samplerate and use the RC3 'quality' settings instead of enforcing an upper bitrate").
With RC3, things are working beautifully. Good to see such support for an open, free standard.
MediaXW is doing the trick for me. Adds the required mime-type handling, so clicking in your browser opens up media player and starts to play the stream.
it doesn't bode well for mass acceptance if it takes more than a miniscule amount of effort to make it work.
With this, it's no more effort than, say, Quicktime. Download the player/plugin - install it, the end.
Cheers,
Ian
The only times I've seen it fail to keep up with demand are Sept 11th and every single Budget day (watch out on April 17th this year). That's "news.bbc.co.uk" though. Netcraft says this about the news site and this about the main site.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Unlike with MP3, at the moment there is only one reference implementation of a Vorbis encoder. There are quite a few frontends, though. If you are in Windows, your best bet at the moment is to use the incredible but slightly clunky EAC, with the command line oggenc encoder available from the main site. The main alternative is CDex, but at the moment it only supports RC2 (not RC3). If you are in Linux, then you can use any ripping program you like as long as you use oggenc as the encoder.
What options to use?
You are using LAME --r3mix at the moment, so give '-q 5' a go (with RC3 on, specify a *quality* level rather than a *bitrate*). Quality 5 (out of 10) is nominally 160kpbs, and should be comparable or better than --r3mix in quality.
For more information and discussion, check out the Hydrogen Audio (Project Mayhem) forum. Many of the developers of various audio formats hang out there, as well as people organising listening tests.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
I encourage others to give the BBC positive comments, and encourage them to continue the testing, and beyond.
Send them to oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk
Here is what I sent:
Subject: Thank You! Keep it up!
Thank you for testing your streaming with ogg. Myself and hundreds of thousands of unix and unix-like operating system users around the world truly appreciate this.
It's often hard to have faith in large media companies. The BBC has always been the exception in my mind, and here it's shown again.
This is especially useful being in the USA, as it is very difficult to get your radio programming. I'll surely be listening using ogg frequently.
I hope the testing goes well, and ogg streaming becomes a future daily stream.
Good Day
Yes I know its not just unix / unix-like operating systems.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I've installed FreeAmp twice now on Windows systems (I try to avoid them), but it's worked alright on both. It sometimes crashes, or just plain disappears, leaving a process hanging around, but for the most part it plays.
If you want a not-completely-free player, the plugin for WinAmp is also directly linked off that page.
You're not going to get burned. The Vorbis source code will always be available, so you'll always be able to play the files (unlike VHS recorders for example, which can't play Beta tapes). The same goes for MP3. When an open audio format is deprecated, old files don't become unplayable, and when a new format becomes popular, you don't have to re-encode (or re-purchase) your entire music collection (people are always making comments like "I don't want to re-encode my 600 albums, so I can't start using Ogg").
As long as you choose a format with an open-source player or codec available, you'll be fine. Just choose whichever one sounds best at the time when you're encoding. The problem with VQF is that it's a closed format. Not all players have plugins available, and the authors of a player couldn't add support even if they wanted to. Cross-platform support is also a problem, but realistically that wouldn't stop a good format from taking off.
Radio 4 also has a lot of varied content.
;-)
I think it is worth pointing out that they have some of the best origonal content in radio.
If you like comedy there is grounbreaking stuff there as well as old favourites.
Most of the best comedy coming out of the UK in the past 10-15 years has had it's roots in radio 4.
As for Radio 1 I would reccomend anyone into music checks out John Peel, one of the longest running DJ's in teh world an the man who has broken almost every major genre in the last 30 odd years.
There's pretty much music for everyone there, best to check out evenings and early mornings (GMT) as they put their more challenging programmes on, but tehy do have top class DJ's on these shows.
As for handling the load. The BBC is better placed than many to deal with it. I don't know teh stats these days but at one point they were the largest web presence in europe and second in the world only to M$
Anyway, good on Auntie Beeb, that's what I say
Working for the (other) man
Maybe because everything that had to do with VQF, but the soundquality, sucked? ;-P
Proprietary, only support for Windows, crappy encoder, etc etc...
The major thing holding back OGG/Vorbis right now is that WinAmp doesn't support it by default, but that will change with WinAmp v3...
Since everybody is free to put OGG/Vorbis support, both decoding and encoding, in his/her/its application without paying stupid licensefees we have already begun to see OGG/Vorbis support in almost all soundapplications! (at least in the TODO-lists)
This is the major reason that OGG will succeed where VQF didn't!
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Actually the Vorbis DirectShow filter allows MP3 dtreams in Ogg containers.
If you want to be "smart" why not write a wmp filter for OGG streams. That way they *can* use their media player to play those OGG encoded streams. Naturally the trick would be to convince MS to bundle it. I don't think they would care much since they do bundle an MP3 player with it.
There already is one
Listening to the streams and emailing the BBC will both lend support, as you have guessed.
Another way might be word of mouth. Tell your friends, tell your parents. Get them to listen and send emails too.
For the technical trial, technical feedback will be great. For convincing management, they'll need non-techie Joe Public to say it was easy to play and sounds great.
http://www.beefcake.org.uk/r1/ some kind soul has created a play list for radio 1!!