[icecast] content on demand HOWTO available

[Todd Poston]

if you point most clients to an mp3 file the entire file must be downloaded
before it can start playing.

The .m3u and .pls files tell an mp3 client to start downloading and buffer
the mp3 so that it can play it while it is downloading.  The biggest issue
with streaming this way is that if the file is encoded at a bitrate that is
higher than can be downloaded by (or served to) the client due to bandwidth
limits, the file will sound like crap if it plays at all...or the buffer has
to be increased so much that you might as well just download the mp3.

I have 128kbs upload limit so if I stream files this way I can just barely
listen to it without it clicking and breaking off..it also means that only 1
person can listen at a time for 128kbs mp3's.  The other problem with this
is that you cannot control how many people are downloading this way.. which
means that your bandwidth could just dry up and noone would be able to
listen.  To really address this issue you could write a script (php, perl,
asp) that reads the binary file (mp3) from disk, and then streams it thru
the http connection.  This is commonly done to serve secure images or other
documents (such as pdf's) individually where you can have the script check
user permissions before serving the file, and in this case, inform listeners
that the server is full.

The other benefit of playlist files (.m3u, .pls, etc) is that you can
specify a list of songs to be played this way instead of just one file at a
time..you can also use these to point to your stream.  This allows you to
include a "welcome" mp3 message if you want :)

hope that helps explain it
~Jackstraw

----- Original Message -----
From: "un" <un at king.dom.de>
To: <icecast at xiph.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 2:29 PM
Subject: Re: [icecast] content on demand HOWTO available

> Big Al:
> >
> > A tutorial on successful use of Icecast Static streaming (on demand) is
> > available here:
> >
> > http://www.modernamericanmusic.com/IcecastStaticHOWTO.html
> >
>
> maybe silly question, but where's the difference in pointing
> directly to the mp3-file instead to a *.m3u ?
> besides, my netscape/linux seems to have problems with the suffix .m3u,
> mime-type is set, but rather nothing happens. m3u is handled by plugger3.2
> any idea?
> thx, uno
>
>
>
> >
> > Asymmetric wrote:
> >
> > > At 10:30 3/22/2001 +0000, you wrote:
> > > >Hi,
> > > >
> > > >Does Icecast support streaming on demand as Shoutcast does?  i.e. if
I
> > > >have some MP3 files in a directory, can these be streamed if I link
to
> > > >them on a web page.
> > >
> > > Yes, and the info on how to do that is all in the documentation/readme
and
> > > the comment blurbs in the config file.
> > >
>
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