[Icecast-dev] understanding icecast decoding from a listener client perspective

[Philipp Schafft]

reflum,

On Thu, 2013-10-03 at 15:44 -0700, Andy Martin wrote:
> I want to write an icecast listener client using C# and C++. I can
> asynchronously connect read the continuous bytes from the stream using
> some basic C# code. When I look at the bytes (interpreted as ASCII) I
> don't understand what it is that I need to be using before passing the
> Ogg to libogg. I see some artist information, and I know that there is
> an ICY200OK type of message. I also see the word Oggs at the
> beginning. But, what do I really need to do to decode the stream and
> the header? What parts of the header are actually necessary for libogg
> to start pulling the packets? 

Icecast is just an HTTP server from the client perspective.
You ask it for the given resource and it will respond with a normal HTTP
reply. That includes the HTTP Header and the data.
From whyt ou write I guess you already handle the HTTP part correctly.
The rest is the data. In case of Ogg (see Content-type) it will start
with 'OggS'.

All of this http body part is just plain Ogg and passed to libogg.


> Ideally, my client would connect to the stream and read the header as
> well as detect track information that is included in the icecast
> periodically.  

The track information are stored within the codec's header two layers
deeper in the stack. (HTTP -> Ogg -> Codec).

For Ogg streams they are updated inline *when* needed. Also for all
common codecs within Ogg they are updated *sample accurate*.
The decoding library (e.g. libvorbis) will handle this.


> The documentation that I've been reading for Icecast only explains the
> server and source client side. I've been working with icecast for a
> little over a year now, and I have had to resort to commercial
> products for decoding and playing a stream. I want to include this
> capability in my project without having to ask people to use Winamp or
> some other player. I  want to find the documentation on how to read
> the stream; how to interpret the periodic meta-data; how to pack these
> bytes into something usable for libogg. I'm very new to this concept
> of pages and packets.

Hope my answer helped you. In general just consider it a plain Ogg file
as you would read it from disk. The only diffrence is that you read it
from HTTP. This also means that dumping the stream with *any* HTTP
client (e.g. wget) to disk will result in a valid and complet copy of
the stream.


> Thank you in advance for reading this request.

You are wellcome.

-- 
Philipp.
 (Rah of PH2)
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