[Icecast] Best version of Icecast? / Icecast as a service? / Videostreaming?

[Thomas B. Rücker]

Hi,

On 9/8/19 5:08 PM, ak18 at 5x9.de wrote:
> 1. Which version of Icecast is the best and newest. Officially it is
> 2.4.4 at icecast.org. But is there a mod version with more features?


There is a 2.5 version of Icecast coming at some point in the not too
far future.
It will have a lot more features, at this point we do not recommend to
run a beta version in production.

Please note that this is the Xiph.org Icecast mailing list. Discussion
and questions about other streaming servers, including historic forks
are off-topic. Thanks!


> 2. Who can run Icecast as a Windows service? My 2.4.3 version does not
> support this. Older versions had this option during installation.
>

Running Icecast on Linux or BSD is far superior in terms of reliability
and maintainability.
We do not consider the Windows builds of Icecast to be particularly
suitable for production use.
There are ways of running it as a service if you must, like e.g. using
"nssm" and pointing it to "icecast.bat"


> 3. Can Icecast stream also video livestream? Where can I find more
> about it?
>

Yes, Icecast has had support for video streams since the early 2000's.
The currently recommended options are:
* WebM (container)
 * VP8 + Vorbis
 * VP9 + Opus
* Ogg (container)
 * Theora + Vorbis

Other legacy formats like "NSV" are likely to work too as Icecast will
go into "legacy" (or simply put "dumb") mode and simply pass through the
data. We can't really help with those though.

Please note that the default settings of Icecast are not well suited to
video streaming. Especially increasing the burst on connect can be very
helpful.

Also most encoders are not tuned for streaming use-cases. For video
codecs you need to enable modes that prioritize "just in time"
(sometimes referred to as "real time") encoding. Also due to how video
players behave you usually have to run a fairly low GoP (key-frame
interval) - this will be a trade-off between bitrate and reliability.


Cheers,

TBR