Slashdot Mirror
Icecast 2.0 Released
ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."
..would mean 3 years of testing, beta or otherwise. It is after all an open source project...
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Any idea if there is a better interface for controlling which songs play, yet?
Before, IIRC it could only shuffle through a bunch of files in a directory.
In case, you don't know, Icecast is an audio broadcasting system that streams music in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format. It is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. The main home page for the Icecast Project is located here.
Icecast is used mainly for a couple different reasons. If you are like me and work at a radio station, you may want to stream your live audio feed over the Internet. This provides access to listeners who would normally fall outside your nominal broadcasting radius. Or, if you wish to play Internet disc jockey, you can create your own playlist, insert sound bytes and broadcast to the world. This is useful for smaller stations who have limited wattage and who wish to play alternative music or talk radio. Because icecast does not broadcast over radio waves or use limited frequencies, it does not fall under FCC rulings. Anyone can set up an icecast server and begin streaming songs or audio files. This ranges from home use through networked machines or for use in a business environment. There are many stations currently using icecast.
>>esr>>
I'd like to run Icecast in our office relaying to some external streams to utilize bandwidth for many listeners. Unfortunately, Icecast stays connected to the relays even when there are no listeners, which is a waste. I remember earlier versions of Icecast had this feature, but it has now since gone.
for non-pro/home broadcasting to take off, there needs to be an underlying p2p network layer. This is particularly true as live video-streaming becomes more popular. http://www.peercast.org/ exists, but sadly doesn't seem to have been updated for 9 months, and activity in their forum is fairly low.
Does this support non-Vorbis Ogg codecs such as Speex or FLAC?
The wonderful thing about shoutcast is, all you need to really run your own internet radio station is WinAmp, shoutcast software, and a playlist.
Icecast sounds like a good idea, but the part where others have to download a plug-in to hear your stream would sound like too much work to the potential listener.
Only if you have Winamp 3 but why would you?
Winamp 2 and 5 support Icecast 2.0 OOB
http://www.icecast.org/3rdparty.php
Incase anyone cant fig it out, icecast is avialable for debian as "apt-get install icecast-server".
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
Gotta love the slashdot effect. 15 comments and the servers down..
I used to run small stations in college, using Shoutcast on both Windows and FreeBSD. Very simple to install and run. I've read the Icecast FAQ, and I'm a bit confused. It says that it's compatible with Shoutcast servers. Does this mean shoutcast.com's listing servers? Has anyone seen how Shoutcast and Icecast compare as far as memory footprint, system usage, bandwidth usage? or are they more or less the same?
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
Why are you trying to impersonate Eric S. Raymond? Your account seems to be new (only two comments posted so far) and you are trying to fool people by having a name spelled Rayrnond instead of Raymond.
Most Slashdot users know that the real Eric S. Raymond uses the account name ESR.
But they wouldn't let THIS in... ;)
you need a plugin to send stuff to the server to relay, *not* to listen.
you should use debian, and then you could just run apt-get install icestorm-server. And yes i love it when a site gets /.ed.
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
Icecast does the work of sending the audio to clients, right? How does one stream audio to the Icecast server from a UNIX machine? There was a plugin for XMMS that did both Shoutcast and Icecast, but I can't find it anymore. Anyone?
Blogzine
For those using pkgsrc, cd to /usr/pkgsrc/audio/icecast and make install
Thanks, I'll be here all day!
clifgriffin > blog
Mirror
that I was somehow annoyed that they declared the old version (1.3.2 or something?) as deprecated long time before releasing 2.0. And the website has been unmaintained for quite a long period of those three years.
Actually I turned off my little community-radio-streaming-project just because ogg support was flaky and administration and monitoring was difficult.
But hey, it is always easy to bitch and not to help hands on.
Maybe now Iwill pick up this thing again..
-silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Since when did sending data via a 1 -> 1 TCP connection become "broadcasting"?
nempo, I notice you know enough English to make unpleasant statements.
Apologies; an ill-timed cron job strangled the disk throughput on the web server.
But really, who the Hell reads Slashdot before noon? Jeez people, go sleep. CVS will still be there come dusk...
Monty
.. especially for streaming, since a 64kbps stream sounds as good as a 128kbps mp3 stream, which means more people can listen to it, even on their congested at-work LANs, and if you don't attract more people, then at least you cut your bandwidth bill in half. Other codecs that sound sweet at 64kbps exist (windows media, real, quicktime) but they're not free, so you end up paying more than you save in bandwidth.
And if you go legal with your streams, some licensing authorities (for want of a better word) haven't been clued in to how good ogg sounds at half the bitrate, so they'll give you a sucky-quality discount.
If you want to go legal w.r.t. streaming BigFive content in The Netherlands, I don't recommend it btw. BUMA/Stemra seem to have a process in place that's relatively sane (i.e. flat fee for non-commercial use) but you ALSO have to pay SENA (not that it's not spelled SANE..) who are total fucktards in their pricingstructure (BUMA/Stemra are fucktards as well, but at least the pricing schedules seem doable. Anyway, having investigated the options I decided against it (and no, I don't stream unlicensed either).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
mhm, well, a year or so ago I became really annoyed at people constantly picking on my spelling, I added that sig and people stopped. Since then, I havn't really bothered changing my sig, maybe it's time ?
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
If you're a non-profit radio station, you can use the software I developed for WMBC radio to track your CD collection, spins, attendence, schedule, and more:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/radiodb/
If you're a for-profit radio station, you can contact me about using the software (probably no issue unless you're a ClearChannel station, which I find repulsive).
If you have any feature requests or suggestions, please let me know.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I'm using Winamp 3 on this work machine, and I can listen to icecast streams with no trouble. I didn't have to download anything other than what winamp.com gave me initially.
I can't reach the icecast page to check, so maybe they added something to later versions that breaks Winamp 3 (I'm using the icecast version that's in Debian Stable).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Exactly what are you talking about? You don't need a plugin of any kind to listen to an Icecast stream.
And yes, there is a plugin available where you can stream right from XMMS to an icecast relay (it's called Oddsock, and I imagine there are others as well).
my mistake. feel free to mod me down and shoot me in the face.
Anyone know how to capture windows sound output?
I would like to capture it and then broadcast with icecast2.
Found you could use a winamp plugin to source icecast2. However winamp can not capture sound(I think?).
Have fun!
holepit; a winders game.
So, are they using UDP as a transport yet? I doubt it. I know, I know, the Icecast people just build a server for the Shoutcast protocol, but dammit, it's always bugged me that the designers of Shoutcast decided to use TCP as the underlying transport. UDP makes metric assloads more sense for a time-sensitive application like realtime audio delivery, where the consequences of losing a packet or two are nothing more than a momentary audio glitch. One thing that caused me to give up on internet radio was the phenomenon where a little packet loss would cause the connection to hang indefinitely, requiring a stop and restart to get it going again. UDP would eliminate this sort of nonsense entirely.
my other sig is written in brainfuck
yea it should read: "English isn't my first language, and I hate spellcheck" just kidding. I didn't think it sounded rude. I actually like to know when someone isn't a english speaking native. Makes it easier sometimes to understand what they are trying to say. Now my excuse...I had the part of my brain removed the controls spelling and grammer.
Thanks to the DMCA, there is the RIAA (or does Sound eXchange cover them?) to worry about. And if you are a commercial radio station, there are the unions to worry about.
200 should be more than enough to get you in.
winamp? what the f*&$ is that?!?
I run Linux, so your argument is entirely irrelevant. Besides, that's somewhat like saying: "Gee, that's a swell app, but it's too much trouble because you have to download and install it." WTF? Dude, go back to luserland.
Wait a second. This guy got a "Score: 2, Informative". I propose a new score:
;)
Score: -1, Total Lameass
--Sorry, just trolling
http://www.oddsock.org/tools/oddcastv2_xmms/
--- March, milde, march!
All icecast 2 betas I tried were missing a vital feature; the ability to flood audio data out at the start of the TCP connection (rather than deliver it at the stream bitrate) -- this is vital because when you take too long delivering the data your stream can die due to filled queues.
For example, there may be temporary packet loss on the network that results in TCP data queueing up at the sending side. Now unless icecast can correct for that rate mismatch, you're consistently behind and eventually the stream dies.
I think they might have now added the fix, which is to step up its send rate from the stream bitrate whenever it has to, i.e. whenever the client falls behind (temporary network glitch). The unfortunate result otherwise is that your streams can die on a flaky network connection, even if the average bandwidth over time is more than enough to handle the audio stream!
Or... let me know, try my stream
. Does it die on you quite quickly after connect?
When OggFile becomes useable support for it will be added to Icecast, whereas we'll have support to stream Flac, Speex, Theora (video), any other Ogg codec available at the time. Also, with OggFile, source clients and media players will be able to support these codec combinations, whereas very few players currently support Speex or Flac streaming now.
It might be of note that iceS2 can also be used to stream from an existing media file without a soundcard being needed. I only got it to work for ogg though, not sure about Mp3s.
Don't forget to mention that OddSock also has DSP stream sources for Winamp and Foobar (not just XMMS). These media player plugins work with multiple servers and, with Icecast2, supports MP3 and Ogg. Shoutcast and Icecast1 can only support MP3.
There is a spec for streaming Vorbis over RTP (which I belive is usually on top of IP directly). I don't know of any implementations of this, though...
I started out using Andromeda and switched to Zina.
Zina is a graphical interface to your MP3 collection, a personal jukebox, an MP3 streamer. It can run on its own, embeded into an existing website, or as a Postnuke/PHPNuke module. It is similar to Andromeda, but released under the GNU General Public License.
Zina Website
.. they are not aware of the rest of the world, at all. ;-]
But really, who the Hell reads Slashdot before noon?
the other side of the globe ?
OOC, how does this library fit in with existing multimedia architectures (I'm thinking Gstreamer, specifically, here)?
When will NSV get it's feet off the ground? I've always wanted a Net TV Station publishing all manner of crap on my hard drive!
Icecast is awesome for audio streaming, and a joy to use. Any video relay servers out there work as well and easy as Icecast?
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Eat a dick. The GNAA, Clit, Trollkore, whoever the fuck you are representing this time, are irrelevant.
I suggest you go outside and play in the snow.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
OggFile could simply add an extra layer of abstraction between Gstreamer (and other multimedia libraries) and the media they access. So, instead of Gstreamer needing specific support for each Ogg codec, it will be able to support just OggFile and let the codecs each be added as plugins to OggFile.
You see, Ogg (.ogg) is just a multimedia container format designed for easily seeking/streaming variable bitrate codecs. Vorbis, Flac, Speex, Theora, etc are Ogg codecs, that is, they were designed specifically to be used with Ogg. That doesn't mean they have to be used with Ogg, nor does it mean that they are the only ones (DivX, for example).
While I do understand the role of Ogg, it does concern me, though, that we're talking about yet another plugin API layered into an existing API (like Gstreamer). Moreover, something like OggFile is really a duplication of effort. See, Gstreamer, for example, was designed specifically to allow things like demuxing container formats and autoplugging decoders for various media types. So, rather than writing this OggFile thing, including creating a whole new plugin API, etc, the developers could be working on creating nice decoder plugins for Gstreamer for the various codecs, and assisting in getting the autoplugging code in Gstreamer up to snuff (Spider works, just not perfectly yet).
On the up side, OggFile means that non-gsteamer projects get better support for the various codecs, too.
Also OggFile is going to be useful for functions other than encoding/decoding. Having direct access to libogg2 means being able to do things like bitstream manipulations (cutting, pasting, etc) and, of course, Icecast and libshout (neither of which do encoding/decoding, but just stream pacing).
It seems like Gstreamer supporting Ogg codecs directly is a redundency which should be replaced by OggFile, not an argument against OggFile's development.
It always worked properly; you misunderstand how the timing has to work.
When a connection is momentarily interrupted, the streaming server doesn't just stall the timing on the connection; it's still tracking how much data had to go out in a given period of time. The total output at any time will always be up to date. Thus, if the network connection is interrupted momentarily, the data will indeed burst forward to the correct point when connectivity resumes. It's like squeezing off a very stretchy hose for a short time.
The connection is dropped only if connectivity disappears for longer than a certain threshold. Oh, and naturally, if you're trying to listen to a broadband bitstream over a 28.8 modem, you're going to get kicked pretty quickly. The hose only stretches so far, and if it bursts your connection gets dropped. That's not a bug.
Also, a client that falls behind on its own will eventually burst the hose. That's a bug in the client; you won't fall further and further behind unless a) your playback rate is way off or b) your buffering is pooched. It's the client's responsibility to accept data at the rate the streaming server sends it. The streaming server's timing is correct; if something happens to mess with the client timing, the client has to deal with that.
As for 'flooding data at the beginning of a connection', that doesn't really make sense in a system where every client has a configurable, different sized prebuffer.
Monty
To legally broadcast, you're going to have to pay some fees, I reckon. Royalties come to mind first, as the DO in fact apply as my college radio station program manager learned (in fact, royalty fees are being charged in what seems to me to be an ex post facto manner... or at least retro active as I'm not entirely sure on how royalty laws' explicitly applied internet streams), but there are other fees as well. Granted, earlier last year the royalty fees for College Radio were cut a bit, but they're still too much for our little non-for-profit to afford. Also, as we just learned, we cannot even legally broadcast our own athletic events (recorded by ourselves live) or unique, copyright-free content without paying some hideous fees. However, Icecast is a godsend to those of us who may eventually just barely scrape together the fee monies to get some nice audio streaming going.
[ you and I are ugly ]
You should probably describe more the setup and the situation under which this is happening; networks are finicky beasts and if this is passing over a cablemodem link or DSL or WAN routing, burst loss or bandwidth assymetry or ARP warring could certainly cause it. Or the clock on your PC may be way too slow/fast. It's unlikely WinAmp or XMMS, but there's easy ways to figure that out too.
Slashdot is the wrong place to debug this further, but if this is causing you headaches (it seems it is) and you want to figure it out, drop by #icecast on irc.freenode.net and we'll get it sorted. It might take a few appearances in the channel to be there at a time when there are the right folks to help you out, but you'll definitely catch us without too much effort.
Monty