[Vorbis] streaming ogg

[Ralph Giles]

On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 10:12:06AM -0400, Steve wrote:

> We are finding that when we stream an ogg file via a .m3u file on our server, playing it with Winamp, pausing the player for an extended period of time results in unpredictable results, such as the file ceasing to play before EOF. Is this a Winamp issue, or is there something someone can tell me about streaming ogg in this manner?

Might be a TCP issue, depending on your operating systems and the 
definition of "a long time". A normal webserver (as opposed to
a "live" stream like icecast provides) will keep sending data at
whatever rate the client requests until the file is finished, but
if you pause, the client will generally stop requesting data. If
no data is sent for long enough (somewhere between 10 minutes and
a few hours, depending) the TCP stack will time out and the connection
will drop. The result is that when you unpause, it will play what 
remains in the download buffer, then stop.

If that's what's happening, it really is a winamp problem, since it can 
detect this and restart the connection. No idea if it does or not 
though.

Does that help?

 -r