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Streaming MP3s on Demand?
The Human Cow asks: "My computer teacher lets us listen to music while we code, but the 150 MB network drive limit kind of puts a damper on the variety of music I have access to. CDs and MP3 players are too much of a hassle to keep up with, so I started wondering if there was any way to set up a streaming radio station that was controllable from a remote PC. I looked at Shoutcast again to see if there was some option that I missed, but I didn't find much. Not having any luck on Google, I've decided to turn to you guys. Does anybody know of a program that'll let me set up a playlist at home and then remotely control it from school? Streaming MP3s on demand, maybe?"
Use a combination of Snowcrash, Winamp, and SHOUTcast. I haven't tried snowcrash with Winamp 5, but it should work.
I believe SHOUTcast has a streaming-on-demand feature, but it's not as nice as Snowcrash.
I am biased as I wrote it, but there was a new release of GNUMP3d yesterday.
THis allows you to stream MP3/OGG Vorbis/MPG/WMV files across a network via a browser interface.
You can search, sort, downsample and generally have a blast.
Check it out?
My solution for a room of three people (including me): An old PC with a soundcard, a pair of el-cheapo passive speakers, an ISA-Bus FM radio card, and a selfmade floppy-sized Linux. It runs a tiny webserver (mini_httpd), dhcpcd, and three CGIs, one to select the radio station, one to control the soundcard's mixer, and one to control the CDROM drive (Audio CD only). After booting, the sound volume is set to background level, and a local FM station playing acceptable music is tuned in. Now we can control everything via web browser, and (because I had too much time) a CHM (Windows HTML Help) file. Station names are stored in a text file on the DOS-formatted floppy, so we could easily update the station list when needed.
Imagine some better speakers and you have music for the entire classroom. OK, my solution has no MP3 player, but it would require just one more CGI and some kind of mass storage device full of MP3s (CD-R/W, DVD-/+RW, USB Flash, Harddisk, CF, whatever). You may want to look for some self-made Linux-based MP3 players, they usually have a web interface for play lists (and perhaps volume controls).
Tux2000
Denken hilft.
shfs website
...
step 1, keep all mp3's in a central place
step 2, have ssh access
step 3, locally shfs mount mp3s
step 4,
step 5, profit!
ok, shfs allows you to mount a remote filesystem while only having ssh access. Simply mount the mp3 dir and point xmms or whatever at it and play. Works flawlessly for me.
Does that mean I get supplicants showering me with gifts?
Seriously, thanks. It's nice to see people using the software and enjoying it.
I'd love it if you'd try Jinzora. I'm the primary developer of it (and loyal /. reader). We are nearing our 1.0 release, and we feel that Jinzora is simply put the easiest to us, install, and configure, and is the best looking of all the web based Jukeboxes around. Jinzora can stream via HTTP (including video), playback locally on the server (ala music TiVo), or frontend a shoutcast server so you can use it for a streaming radio station.
Please stop on by at www.jinzora.org, we'd love to have the /. crowd's input! We are VERY open to suggestions/bug/feature requests and try to answer all forum posts VERY quickly!
I was assuming in the first question the download was related to a webserver - having just a raw directory index, or hierarchy.
In that case, as you say, the streaming is pretty much identical.
The real difference is with my project, and others like it, you can create playlists, control downsampling on the fly, see a list of the most recent tracks served, have a realtime list of currently streaming files and more.
For me personally I use the GUI a lot due to having a large archive of music - and the single killer feature is the ability to search.
I can instantly create a playlist filled with songs by a single artist, or of a particular genre.
The code is extensible, and the GUI is themable, so there are many more interesting things that can be done - for example one think I've been thinking of writing for a while is a time-filler. Type in a time and have it return a random playlist which lasts just that amount of time.
A simple means of filling 30 minutes whilst working for example.
Other options and features are available, but I hope I've cleared it up a little bit anyway..
Just get a freaking iPod! Why the heck would you want to waste your schools bandwidth or drive space with MP3's? Another thing, it would open the school up to problems with the RIAA who is already going after students and some of the schools themselves. I am sure you would catch holy hell if a SysAdmin found your MP3 collection on the schools server!
Companies are paranoid about this sort of thing and most block MP3 files with their proxy servers and are already scanning drives looking for MP3's on employee machines.
The iPod will handle everything self contained in a portable form. 40GB's if you get the biggest iPod.
Most people could carry their entire music collection on a single iPod. Even if you can't fit it all on the iPod, you can at least load a huge amount. More then you could possibly listen to in a single day.
If you want to connect it to speakers, there are small kits for that or you just plug it into PC speakers. Heck, you can even broadcast a signal with an iPod accessory to other's with FM Walkmans to listen to the music if you wish to use headphones.
iTunes will stream the playlists to another iTunes computer on the same subnet. Gasp, you could even use the Windows version of iTunes if you must. There are ways around the subnet thing. Streaming from a home computer to the campus will probably suck up huge amounts of bandwidth on both ends. If you have a cable modem at home, prepare to be slapped for exceeding a bandwidth cap. Also you might attract the attention of a network sysadmin on campus when they notice the bandwidth spike.
As far as development goes, nothing beats an Apple laptop with the developer tools and few other things thrown in. C/C++, ObjC, Java, Tomcat, JBOSS, Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, Emacs, ViM, CVS, etc., etc. Plus you can get Microsoft Office X which is completely compatible with Office XP. You can even get Virtual PC along with Office X to run other Windows based software if you must.
For GNUMP3d:
What about FLAC support since they are not lossy?
Would it be possible to take a repository of FLAC files and deliver them one at a time as say ogg vorbis quality 4 files dynamically?
If that's too much work to do, would it be possible to request the system convert FLAC files into temporary ogg files by way of a playlist (uploaded or otherwise)? You could have a queue for each user. As the CPU/memory is available, temporarily encode the files (and remove ones no longer being requested after X amount of time).
Who wants to permanently store/rip MP3s when they are lossy? There will always be a better lossy compression format to convert nonlossy FLAC files to.
Considering the space requirements of FLAC, I doubt the server operator would mind some temporary ogg files.
Since everyone is plugging their own programs that do this, I'll plug mine: Gronk.
It gives you a FreeDB-driven web-based playlist manager and controls a running XMMS process. The XMMS Oddcast DSP plugin lets it shout to a local Icecast server so you can listen locally or remotely.
I also like the Crossfade plugin, for smooth transitions between songs.