[Icecast] Icecast support for HLS or MPEG-DASH

[Chip]

Thank you very much, Fred - that's very helpful.

Chip Scooter

On Wed, 16 Mar 2022 at 20:20, Fred Gleason <fredg at paravelsystems.com> wrote:

> On Mar 16, 2022, at 15:08, Chip <chiapas at aktivix.org> wrote:
>
> And may I ask why you would be so shocked if support for HLS/DASH ever
> came to Icecast?
>
>
> Because they are two completely different animals. It would be like
> comparing a mountain lion to a dolphin. There’re both mammals, but
> otherwise designed for totally different environments.
>
>
> Is it because they are proprietary protocols? But Icecast has support for
> MP3 and AAC.
>
>
> The audio codecs are the same, yes. The transports however are utterly
> different.
>
> ICY/ice delivers a single sequential bitstream to each player. That makes
> the encoder and player relatively simple and easy to implement, but means
> that you need a fairly complex “stream splitter” (for lack of a better
> term) between them to create and manage a separate, unicast bitstream copy
> for each player. That’s the role that Icecast and its brethren fulfill.
>
> OTOH, HLS/DASH takes that bitstream and splits it into segments of a given
> length (10 secs/segment is typical) and then posts each segment to a web
> server. Players download those segments, reassemble them into the original
> bitstream and then render the content. Since all of this segmentation and
> reassembly takes place at the endpoints, it makes both the encoder and the
> player *much* more complex. The advantage though is that the server then
> can be an ordinary ‘garden variety’ web server, because all you’re doing
> from the server POV is posting and downloading files. Such files are
> straightforward to replicate through a CDN, using the same methods that are
> already well established for replicating web content, whereas for ICY/ice
> streams you need special server software —e.g. the ‘relay’ functionality in
> Icecast.
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
> | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. |             Chief Developer             |
> |                           |             Paravel Systems             |
> |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
> |         A room without books is like a body without a soul.         |
> |                                                                     |
> |                                                         -- Cicero   |
> |---------------------------------------------------------------------|
>
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