[Icecast] Newbie needs help

[Geoff Shang]

Mike Allen wrote:

> I am running FreeBSD v7.03 and using icecast2 which is happily relaying
> a shoutcast MP3 stream. I want to play (mix)a pre-recorded "Stream ID"
> file to the existing stream once per hour.

there's no way you can *mix* the spot with other content using Icecast.  As 
has been pointed out, you'd have to do this at the source of your other 
content.

If you'd like the spot to override the existing content, then have the 
other content resume once the spot has finished, this can be achieved with 
fallbacks.

the following mountpoints are examples, you can call them whatever you 
want.

Assuming your Shoutcast relay is on /relay, you could have another mount 
called /main for example and have your Ices send the spot there at the 
appropriate time.

Then configure Icecast so that /main falls back to /relay and so that 
fallback-override is enabled.

Then, providing your listeners tune into /main and not to /relay directly, 
the listener will connect to /main which will be disconnected most of the 
time, and then fall through to /relay.  When your spot plays, your streamer 
will connect to /main which will pull all listeners back to /main to hear 
the spot.  When the spot finishes, your listeners will once again fall 
through to /relay.

> I've tried ices0 but no luck.  Any help will be much appreciated.

Note that as far as I know, Ices0 can't be told to stream a file once and 
then exit.  Ezstream can though and is probably more light-weight for sucha 
simple thing.

And as has been pointed out, you need to make sure all your stream 
parameters are the same for this to work with MP3 streaming (and presumably 
AAC as well - I've not used it).  Ogg Vorbis will cope much more 
gracefully.

I use a three tear setup along these lines where I work, one playing a 
backup loop of programming, one which relays a live stream if it is 
available and one which plays prerecorded programs and repeats.  The 
prerecords play on the primary mount, which falls back to the live relay 
and this to the backup loop.  Works well.

Geoff.