Icecast Streaming Media Server

[Anonymous]

I have a small Mini-ITX based Gentoo server that I use to host Twonkyvision UPnP media to my Terratec Noxons and PS3.

I have broadband bandwidth caps, but love listening to internet radio. Many of the stations I listen to are already being transmitted for free, on my Sky satellite (which is very close to my server).

I have been fiddling with running the line out from the sat box, to the line-in on the ITX PC, and then broadcasting it, so it can be picked up as any other net radio station (but a local one, that does not sap my bandwidth allowance).

I got it working (ish) with Icecast and ices2.1, using OGG format (which Noxon streams OK, but the PS3 does not). The problem I have, is the overhead of permenantly encoding and streaming it pegs my CPU at near 100% for the OGG encode.

Anyone know of a less CPU intensive solution? I am thinking streaming PCM, if I can. The other solution, is to somehow get the encoding process to start/stop when clients connect and disconnect (this is a LAN only icecast, as the only time it will be in use, is if someone around the home uses it).

Seems a really bad idea to permenantly encode and stream, when nobody is connected!!

[karlH]

The only way I know you can start and stop a source client on-the-fly is by using the listener add/remove options in url auth. If listener_add called and the listener count is 0 then kick off the source cliient and wait a little before sending ok back to the listener. The remove could stop the source client when the listener count drops back to 0 again.

karl.