[Icecast] New and need help

[Geoff Shang]

On Fri, 30 Aug 2013, Stephen Atkins wrote:

> So what I would like to do is setup a machine (most likely a Raspberry PI
> or Beagle Board Black) that has a podcast catcher.  It would always
> download the latest podcasts I subscribe to and delete the old ones.  There
> are a few options for this and isn't a problem.  I would then like to have
> Icecast randomly play podcasts that are in a specified directory and repeat
> them 24/7.  Once the file goes away it won't try to play it any more.

Icecast is merely the server.  You'll have to send it something to serve.

Assuming these podcasts are in mp3 format, I'd use Ices 0.x to do this. 
You can (I think) get it to send without reencoding, which should play 
nicely on a Pi.

You can set it up to work from a playlist.  If you could get the playlist 
to be regenerated every time there's a change, Ices will detect the change 
and pick up the new files.

I can't remember if ezstream can do all this, it might be able to and may 
be a better choice.

If your podcasts are in multiple formats/bitrates, you'll probably need to 
encode the stream to a common format before sending, so your player 
doesn't choak on the format changes.  This may or may not be doable on the 
Pi, depending on the format needed.

HTH,
Geoff.