How?

Jan 28, 2010 | Uncategorized | 4 comments

Right. Here’s what I want to do, but I am not really sure how I’m going to do it without using loads of bandwidth.

I currently have Icecast set up on a virtual server running Linux. It hosts a few broadcasts at the moment however their not permanently available. therefore, if you visit a broadcast mount point such as http://digitaldarragh.com:8000/madfortrad.m3u You will not hear anything unless someone is broadcasting to it.

The problem here is, when you advertise a broadcast like this, people like to go visit the stream right away. At the moment, when they visit it, they either get errors or their media player tries to download something. This isn’t good for very obvious reasons.

So, the problem is therefore, how do I get something to stream to this Icecast mount point all the time.

With Icecast, I can specify a secondary mountpoint. So, if I could get something to stream to this alternative mountpoint it would be perfect. Problem is, that if it’s an external source, it’s going to eat up bandwidth and also, it will likely slow the performance of the server.

So, how do I stream using a virtual server that doesn’t have a sound card and therefore obviously doesn’t have a device to stream to? Icecast needs a client to stream to it. Is there a client that would sit quietly as a service and stream to a mount point all day long? Surely this client wouldn’t work without a sound card? Or, is there some kind of virtual sound card module that I could use?

Thinking out loud, actually, the encoder / client doesn’t necessarily need to output to a sound card. and it could use a local loop back to the IceCast server. But, again, I need to make sure the client is really lightweight so it doesn’t create too much overhead in terms of memory and processor utilization because the servers priority always needs to be focused on serving websites.

Any ideas?

4 Comments

  1. Ignasi

    I used to have a server running ShoutCast (which is basically the same thing) and permanently had an old windows pc streaming music to it. I simply used WinAmp and a plugin for ShoutCast. It worked really well actually.

    Reply

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