[icecast] on demand server

[Marcos B]

Hello,

I am trying to set up a stream server for audio archives.
I've just tried Icecast2 / Ices, and it is really good stuff,
but I cannot yet get what I want : streaming on demand.

I would like the user to just "click and stream" on the web page (and
not listen to a stream that is already running).

I don't know if it is possible with Icecast/Ices.

Any suggestions would be wellcome !

I realize that I may be asking for something that is trivial, but I
didn't find the solution.
Please consider this as a _newbie_ question !

The reason why I am not just putting some .m3u links on the webpage and
let my apache server do the job is that I don't want users to download
the file. The second reason is that I will put big audio files (ie
30minutes) and I'm afraid apache will soon be overburdened. I'm not sure
Apache has been made for this (even if it can serve big files, I know).
Icecast would be more appropriate since it has been made in purpose of
streaming audio (right?).

Maybe I'm wrong, but I still want to know if I can do on demand
streaming with Icacast, and how.
Maybe Ices is not the right source client for this job. If not, what
should be the right choice ?

Thanks for your answers (I hope there will be one).

Marcos

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[Ralph Giles]

Post by Marcos B
I am trying to set up a stream server for audio archives.
I've just tried Icecast2 / Ices, and it is really good stuff,
but I cannot yet get what I want : streaming on demand.

Icecast isn't really designed for this. You could mount each
file you want to host at a separate location and use individual
ices instances to feed them on a continuous loop. That won't
give you start-on-demand, but will make it possible to send
everything through icecast.

You could also hack something up where the user concacts a
CGI script which launches an ices instance for their custom
stream and then redirects them to it on the icecast server.
That will do what you want, at least for clients that support
redirects.

Post by Marcos B
I would like the user to just "click and stream" on the web page (and
not listen to a stream that is already running).

Just using static files with apache (or any other webserver) is
the way to go here. It's optimized for serving files on demand,
and has no problem with large files. The bandwidth usage is
equivalent to what icecast would need for an equal number of users.
Icecast is really only designed for concurrently serving live
streams and dealing with the complications of that. That's the
nice thing about http streaming (and standards in general): it
just works no matter what you use for a server or a client. The
browser will download the file, and a player will stream it.

Post by Marcos B
The reason why I am not just putting some .m3u links on the webpage and
let my apache server do the job is that I don't want users to download
the file.

People like to kid themselve about this, but I think you'll find there's
little difference. There's not a big gap between people knowlegeable
enough to pull the download url out of the m3u file and paste it into
their browser, and people knowlegable enough to pull the icecast url
out of the m3u file and paste it into their browser.

Hope that helps,
-r
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[Jack Moffitt]

Post by Ralph Giles

Post by Marcos B
I am trying to set up a stream server for audio archives.
I've just tried Icecast2 / Ices, and it is really good stuff,
but I cannot yet get what I want : streaming on demand.

Icecast isn't really designed for this. You could mount each
file you want to host at a separate location and use individual
ices instances to feed them on a continuous loop. That won't
give you start-on-demand, but will make it possible to send
everything through icecast.

Why can't you just use apache? You just need a script that will
generate the playlist file to pass to the player when you click on an
"audio link". There are many packages that set these up for you
automatically. Search freshmeat.

Icecast is really only for radio-like streams. Either you have a live
source, or you have a continuous non-live source. For basic audio
streaming not of this type, Apache almost always works great.

Post by Ralph Giles

Post by Marcos B
The reason why I am not just putting some .m3u links on the webpage and
let my apache server do the job is that I don't want users to download
the file.

People like to kid themselve about this, but I think you'll find there's
little difference. There's not a big gap between people knowlegeable
enough to pull the download url out of the m3u file and paste it into
their browser, and people knowlegable enough to pull the icecast url
out of the m3u file and paste it into their browser.

Search freshmeat or versiontracker for the hundreds of 'stream-ripping'
programs. Some of them are quite nice.

Why would you want to restrict people doing something that is perfectly
legal and normal to do? :)

In any case, Ralph has a point that it's trivial to cirvumvent all the
tech "solutions" to making streams unsavable. Even the proprietary
solutions of this form like Apple's, Real's, and Microsoft's.

jack.
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