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Building a Simple Streaming Media Server?
neomage86 asks: "I'm looking for a simple Network Jukebox. I want to be able to stream media from a Windows (it has to be Windows for other school work) server to remote machines over a LAN (only 1-2 clients at a time). I want to be able to choose the song that's playing from the remote machine, video would be nice, but not necessary, and it should be free (as in beer, I'm a student). Any ideas?"
"For some quick background, I'm an undergrad with a desktop PVR with several hundred gigs of media on it. I also have a laptop, and use computer labs fairly often. Anywhere on campus, I can expect to get a minimum of 10 megabits/s between my current machine and the PVR. My first thought was just Windows file sharing, but it breaks often (I'm not sure why, I have an Apache web server, and FileZilla ftp server running on the same machine that never go down) and I can't install Samba on the Solaris lab machines. Ideally the client should be web based, so I don't need to download anything to receive, but that is optional."
http://www.videolan.org/ Multiplatform, works great.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
for samba web. you will get some helpful results
PeerCast.org is one solution. You can set it up on one PC letting only clients on the local network connect.
This is the feature you're looking for, right?
Streaming across a LAN, free, media jukebox, runs on Windows.
GPL Deconstructed
wait ... lemme get this straight ... the server's gonna run windows, and the clients are gonna run solaris?
I want to be able to stream media from a Windows (it has to be Windows for other school work) server
This is a weird set of arbitrary requirements. Is it really worthy of an interesting Ask Slashdot question? The questioner just describes a machine with a directory full of files that can be mounted by other machines.
Get an old Pentium II machine. Put Linux on it. Install and configure Samba. Or click on 'sharing' and share the folder the files are in.
I don't get why this is an interesting question.
GNUMP3d is a perl based streaming server which allows you to share a music/video/multimedia archive across a LAN.
Whilst it's designed on Linux machines and only sporadically tested under Windows it should do the job you want - point it at a directory with your media files in it, then fire up a browser to choose your songs / stream away.
Failing that Andromedia should do a good job if you have PHP on your Windows version of Apache. Their personal edition is cheap, and I think there's a free version somebody wrote designed to mirror it - but I've spoken to the author and he's a good guy so I'm happy to recommend it.
Try RadioToolBox for php based or mod_mp3 for apache module based.
Or if you can write some php code, it's not so hard to write one up yourself.
Just list the files in a music directory and create playlist(pls or m3u) upon click.
I've been using netjuke for over a year, it streams mp3's and other audio files. I think video might be in it's future. Check it out http://www.netjuke.org/. I use it under linux, but works just as easily under windows.
Winamp and shoutcast. There's even plugins for winamp out there that give you a huge amount of control via a web interface. You'll need a windows client running winamp to receive nullsoft streaming video, but any mp3 player can pick up a shoutcast stream.
I suppose the only downside to this is that if you ever DO end up with multiple people using it at the same time, they can only watch/listen to the same thing. Though maybe you'd become something of a college net-radio operator, who knows?
http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html
I've only used it on Mac, but it works very well. You can select media from a web interface.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
and it should be free (as in beer, I'm a student).
Hell !! i am a student and I dont ask for free beer.. maybe i shud start doing that!!
Free to limited clients (maybe 25 concurrrent)
your problem mirrors what i wanted to do exactly one month ago. i got a lot of replies but nothing useful. then a random email came my way suggesting edna a small python script that can be run in linux or windows. it creates a small html web interface that passes m3u playlists so that your player does the requesting. its robust easy to set up and works great. Ive had friends from israel and japan stream my music on a cable modem no problem. the website is http://edna.sourceforge.net/
Apache (an most other http servers) can serve it all without any work on your part besides making your media directory the root and enabling directory browsing.
Is the content on this media server going to stuff you own or have permission to distribute?
You could try Darwin Streaming Server, the open source (Apple Public Source License) version of the QuickTime Streaming Server that is included with Mac OS X Server.
i ng/
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/stream
My understanding is that it can stream MPEG files, and also pretty much anything that QuickTime can play.
Hope that helps.
-Ster
Windows XP Remote Desktop.
Assuming the host is a Pro machine, it's simple.
Connect to the machine using the latest version of the MS-RDP client (the one from Windows XP, mstsc.exe)
You have an option to "bring sound to this system", "leave sound at remote system" or "do not play sound"
just bring it to your system. It's recompressed somehow, I think to 128 kbps, but its decent for most listening.
"Anywhere on campus, I can expect to get a minimum of 10 megabits/s between my current machine and the PVR"
That'll be until every other student is doing this (unless your net techs have given you the bandwidth and some QoS guarantee)...
2- Install SongRequester plugin (or its source) that will run a webserver and gives people the options to add songs to the playlist. it has many options.
So actually you just run winamp and songrequester plugin on server and with its builtin webserver, you just point clients to it and they can add songs to playlist via web browser.
Alex Jones, Is That You?
www.shoutcast.com excellent radio software, the "DJ" can be local or global
Seriously, this is a non-question. Not only does Google turn up hundreds of straightforward options, but in 1999 I was streaming MP3s off a 486 SX-33 running Linux and Apache on a 13-gig drive, using nothing more complicated than saving a Winamp playlist and using Notepad's find-replace to convert each entry into a URL. From that point it's like the files are sitting on your own hard drive.
It only deals with music, but Icecast apparently supports video streaming now, so with some changes it could support video too, I imagine.
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
I wrote a little ole asp page that will allow you to flip through your directory structure, if there are no media files, it assumes it is part of the directory structure adn slows links to lall subfolders (if those folders cotnain folder.jpg, then it shows the thumbnail) this keeps going until you get down to the media folders themselves. If you have a folder.jpg there, it also shows the folder thumbnail (album art) and gives you links to all the media files in that directory (media files are defined as havign an extension that is contained in a user configurable string in the file itself) it also gives links to create a playlist in asx format (the xml file for windows media player) m3u or pls (whicha re really the same, just different mime types returned so you favorite player will open automatically) There is a drawback in asp (vbscript) in that it can not look into folders with a comma in the name.
It is somethig that I literally threw together in an hour or so and have been meaning to get back to and clean up, if only to have it spit out nicely formatted html that I can style better with style sheets, but I have not had the time.
If this is not a problem, I would be hapy to share my code with you. I use it at work to listen to music from my home computer all the time. I have never used it for video, but I don't see any reason why it would not work just as well.
I reject your reality
I was using Jinzora for a while and it's a pretty slick little php app that does pretty much what you are looking for:
http://www.jinzora.org/
I personally am running daapd on a linux box to stream music to a couple of other machines in my apartment.
Use Winamp with the shout plugin...
A shoutcast server
and wwwinamp from halo 8....
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Just blow $400 on the MP3Beamer!
He did what all real men do and wrote a web interface in PHP that allows him to list out all of his music on a web page. He can select individual tracks, entire albums or a collection of albums by an artist and then generate a *.m3u file that gets sent to the client and with proper file association, launches the proper media player. The playlist just contains http URLs in it that point to what he chose. Since bandwidth restrictions aren't a part of what this kid is asking for, that should be fine. Oh yeah.. you also have to alter the mime types configuration on your Apache server so that the MP3 or Ogg Vorbis data is streamed via http rather than downloading it as a file I believe.
But kid... try this. Put a few MP3s in a directory on your Apache htdoc path. Then go to any box that has a web browser and some kind of media player that will play MP3s and put in a URL like this:
http://myapacheserver.mydomain.net/mymp3s/cat stevens/wild world.mp3
If you are smart and you use Winamp or Xmms, Xine or MPlayer, you will just hear the song start to play. No SAMBA needed. Now... the part about not having to install a player, that's a different kettle of fish and much harder to achieve. I'd recommend that you search the net for Java media players. Once you find one, you'll need to figure otu a way to deliver that to the client and then send that player a playlist with http URLs.
If you don't get any of what I'm saying, then you really don't need to be asking the question.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I know this may not help, but if you are interested in LAN streaming, you can set up a linux box with NFS export.
It's not streaming per se, but you can have 4 or more clients accessing mpeg4 movies in 10Mbps LAN. Audio would be much less taxing. You can even view movies wirelessly. Just make sure to set up proper security.