Icecast 2.0 Released

ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."

Icecast is great

[Eric S Rayrnond]

In case, you don't know, Icecast is an audio broadcasting system that streams music in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format. It is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. The main home page for the Icecast Project is located here [icecast.org].

Icecast is used mainly for a couple different reasons. If you are like me and work at a radio station, you may want to stream your live audio feed over the Internet. This provides access to listeners who would normally fall outside your nominal broadcasting radius. Or, if you wish to play Internet disc jockey, you can create your own playlist, insert sound bytes and broadcast to the world. This is useful for smaller stations who have limited wattage and who wish to play alternative music or talk radio. Because icecast does not broadcast over radio waves or use limited frequencies, it does not fall under FCC rulings. Anyone can set up an icecast server and begin streaming songs or audio files. This ranges from home use through networked machines or for use in a business environment. There are many stations currently using icecast.

Re:Icecast is great..

[nempo]

gnump3d -> http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/

Re:you can't listen to this in winamp, so who care

[lotsofno]

The wonderful thing about shoutcast is, all you need to really run your own internet radio station is WinAmp, shoutcast software, and a playlist.

Icecast sounds like a good idea, but the part where others have to download a plug-in to hear your stream would sound like too much work to the potential listener.

Re:you can't listen to this in winamp, so who care

[shione]

Only if you have Winamp 3 but why would you?

Winamp 2 and 5 support Icecast 2.0 OOB

http://www.icecast.org/3rdparty.php

Debian Install

[rudabager]

Incase anyone cant fig it out, icecast is avialable for debian as "apt-get install icecast-server".

Re:You'd think 3 years of development...

[mobby_6kl]

From their site:
After years in development and years in alpha testing, The icecast development team has released version 2.0.0 of its streaming media server. Icecast2 supports Ogg Vorbis and MP3 streaming and has many features and functions you would expect from a world class streaming media server.

Re:you can't listen to this in winamp, so who care

[R0]

you need a plugin to send stuff to the server to relay, *not* to listen.

Mirror

[arvindn]

Mirror [ernet.in]

Re:Icecast vs. Shoutcast?

[damiam]

I believe it means that a Shoutcast client can access an Icecast server as if it were a Shoutcast server. Icecast has potentially lower bandwidth usage, since it supports Vorbis. Otherwise, I've never noticed much of a difference (I've never used either of them for anything serious).

Re:you can't listen to this in winamp, so who care

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what are you talking about? You don't need a plugin of any kind to listen to an Icecast stream.

And yes, there is a plugin available where you can stream right from XMMS to an icecast relay (it's called Oddsock, and I imagine there are others as well).

Re:Icecast is great..

[stevey]

(I'm the author of GNUMP3d)

Due to the Savanna compromise the downloads aren't available from gnu.org.

You may either use CVS to checkout the code - or download from a temporary archive I've setup [steve.org.uk].

Thanks for the plug ;)

Re:Ogg rules

[xiphmont]

... but the AAC+SBR you need to get low bitrate performance with Darwin is not.

(He said Ogg, not Icecast, as Icecast is not a codec and neither is the Darwin Streaming Server)

Monty

Re:Alternative Ogg codecs? (with OggFile)

[ArcRiley]

Monty is working on something called OggFile, which will be part of libogg2 (currently available in CVS). Basically, the goal is that OggFile will work alot like current proprietary systems (Real, Quicktime, etc) in that any program that uses OggFile will be able to transparently support any codec which OggFile supports (via plugins).

When OggFile becomes useable support for it will be added to Icecast, whereas we'll have support to stream Flac, Speex, Theora (video), any other Ogg codec available at the time. Also, with OggFile, source clients and media players will be able to support these codec combinations, whereas very few players currently support Speex or Flac streaming now.

Re:Vorbis-over-RTP.

[poussiere]

Vorbis over RTP is not usable as it is, as vital info regarding decoding header tranmission is missing. Anyway, UDP would be really interesting over a p2p multicast streaming network. MP3 over RTP is quite usable (with RFC3119 type streaming).

Self-advertising: poc (http://www.bl0rg.net/software/poc/) can stream ogg/vorbis over HTTP and mp3 over UDP (RTP, and UDP with FEC) and HTTP.

Re:Alternative Ogg codecs? (with OggFile)

[ArcRiley]

Gstreamer's function would not change, it's a layer of abstraction between applications and the media formats they support. The same can be said about SDL, etc.

OggFile could simply add an extra layer of abstraction between Gstreamer (and other multimedia libraries) and the media they access. So, instead of Gstreamer needing specific support for each Ogg codec, it will be able to support just OggFile and let the codecs each be added as plugins to OggFile.

You see, Ogg (.ogg) is just a multimedia container format designed for easily seeking/streaming variable bitrate codecs. Vorbis, Flac, Speex, Theora, etc are Ogg codecs, that is, they were designed specifically to be used with Ogg. That doesn't mean they have to be used with Ogg, nor does it mean that they are the only ones (DivX, for example).

Re:Debian Install

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's still better is that what he said is just plain wrong 'cause icecast-server corresponds to the 1.3 version which is really old, well 3 years in fact. If you want to get icecast from the development branch, that is Icecast 2 when it is packaged, you may want to better try "apt-get install icecast2"

Re:Alternative Ogg codecs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want FLAC? And before you start to talk about non-lossy... blablabla, then listen: WAW (FLAC) is lossy codecs tooo (only that they are compatible), it encodes the signal to stupid time-dependent samplind with 1/2^16 level and 1/44000 sec errors. For the same bit-rate as WAW (or FLAC) has, ogg and mp3 -type codecs would do MUCH BETTER job (with respect to human-ear sensing) than that stupid time/level sampling. With the same bitrate as waw (FLAC) and using mp3 (ogg) type codecs, you would have NO chance to hear ANY noise or sampling artifacts (not saying recording more channels etc.) HOWGH.

Re:Capture windows sound output?

[Fryth]

Using the Shoutcast DSP (dunno about Odd or Ice), you can specify the soundcard as your audio source, not Winamp. Then, all you need to do is change your recording source in the windows mixer to "What-U-Hear" (not all sound drivers have support for this). Then you can capture anything that opens a windows wave handle. The quality will probably suffer a bit.

Re:What about Video?

[ArcRiley]

See above thread about OggFile (Alternative Codecs). Icecast will likely support streaming Ogg Vorbis+Theora (and other codec combinations) when OggFile is released.

Media players which support Ogg Theora alpha-2 (Xine and mplayer) already support streaming Ogg video. If you have one of these players compiled with Theora support, try opening it with a url from here [xiph.org].

You misunderstand how the rate control works

[xiphmont]

It always worked properly; you misunderstand how the timing has to work.

When a connection is momentarily interrupted, the streaming server doesn't just stall the timing on the connection; it's still tracking how much data had to go out in a given period of time. The total output at any time will always be up to date. Thus, if the network connection is interrupted momentarily, the data will indeed burst forward to the correct point when connectivity resumes. It's like squeezing off a very stretchy hose for a short time.

The connection is dropped only if connectivity disappears for longer than a certain threshold. Oh, and naturally, if you're trying to listen to a broadband bitstream over a 28.8 modem, you're going to get kicked pretty quickly. The hose only stretches so far, and if it bursts your connection gets dropped. That's not a bug.

Also, a client that falls behind on its own will eventually burst the hose. That's a bug in the client; you won't fall further and further behind unless a) your playback rate is way off or b) your buffering is pooched. It's the client's responsibility to accept data at the rate the streaming server sends it. The streaming server's timing is correct; if something happens to mess with the client timing, the client has to deal with that.

As for 'flooding data at the beginning of a connection', that doesn't really make sense in a system where every client has a configurable, different sized prebuffer.

Monty

Stop on by the #icecast channel

[xiphmont]

You should probably describe more the setup and the situation under which this is happening; networks are finicky beasts and if this is passing over a cablemodem link or DSL or WAN routing, burst loss or bandwidth assymetry or ARP warring could certainly cause it. Or the clock on your PC may be way too slow/fast. It's unlikely WinAmp or XMMS, but there's easy ways to figure that out too.

Slashdot is the wrong place to debug this further, but if this is causing you headaches (it seems it is) and you want to figure it out, drop by #icecast on irc.freenode.net and we'll get it sorted. It might take a few appearances in the channel to be there at a time when there are the right folks to help you out, but you'll definitely catch us without too much effort.

Monty