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

["Thomas B. Rücker"]

Hi,

On 10/04/2013 06:27 PM, Andy Martin wrote:
> I looked at these requests and started trying to interpret the data of
> the header and the stream. I receive a header, and even when I added
> the parameter to the request to try and get meta-data, it seems that
> it is not being included. Namely, the number that is supposed to tell
> the distance between each meta-data section that is sent in the
> stream. I couldn't figure out the config setting for relaying
> meta-data with my icecast stream.

You're talking about legacy ICY things. Ogg, as Philipp explained has
the metadata inside, not piggybacked into the raw data.
So to get the metadata for an ogg stream you have to use the libraries.
If you're dealing with Icecast streaming an unsupported/legacy format
(yes that includes mp3), then you need to signal capability to extract
injected metadata to the server and then remove it from the stream
before you hand it over to a demuxer/decoder.

> When I look at the stream, I also noticed that it says Oggs twice.
> Which one of these starts the stream? So what information is really
> important from the header, and is any of that actually important for
> decoding? How Can I find the first part of the stream that needs to be
> passed to Libogg, and does libogg or (libvorbis) have a feature that
> will callback when it reads meta data.

I'd hope, that libogg has some documentation.
Generally everything after HTTP headers can be passed to the demuxer.
If you see a second Oggs, that might be another chain element starting.
Please note that ogg streams are often chained. This is actually how
you'll usually get metadata updates, there is a new chain element and it
has new metadata.

Hope that helps

Thomas


> On 10/3/13 5:04 PM, Brad Isbell wrote:
>> The headers you get back are just an HTTP response.  When you get to
>> the actual data part of the message (where you see Oggs) that's the
>> data you send off to libogg to decode.
>>
>> You will need to remove metadata from the response periodically.  See
>> my posts here for more info:
>>
>> http://stackoverflow.com/a/6072488/362536
>> http://stackoverflow.com/a/4914538/362536
>>
>>
>> 	*Brad Isbell // AudioPump*
>> brad at audiopump.co <mailto:brad at audiopump.co>
>> Skype: bradisbell
>> Phone: +1 312-488-4680
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Andy Martin <zippo227 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:zippo227 at gmail.com>> 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?
>>
>>     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 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.
>>
>>     Thank you in advance for reading this request.
>>     -- 
>>
>>     Best,
>>     Andy S. Martin
>>
>>     www.guitarrpg.com <http://www.guitarrpg.com>
>>     M.S. Computer Science Game Development
>>     University of Southern California '2013 Alumni
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
>
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