Icecast Streaming Media Server

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

why Fallbackfiles of aacPlus Format are not supported as Fallback File. Livestream is perfectly running with AAC+, but the created AAC+ Fallback file
(neigther with .aac, -m4a nor .mp3 sufix ) is sent and played by the Player. (e. g. Winamp)

Thanks! Regards, Adam

[MikeS]

Icecast only officially supports free formats (such as Ogg Vorbis, and Theora).

Many other formats work through a generic passthrough mechanism - icecast will just send data on from a source client to the listening clients.

It's entirely possible that this isn't sufficient for full support of AAC+, in which case there's nothing that we can do - AAC+ is not a free format, so we're unable to include full support.

Mike

[heartsofspace21]

So, what is this "generic passthrough mechanism" you refer to?
Can you provide an example?

Thank you!

Joseph
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[karlH]

The passthrough mechanism is just as the name implies, there is no checking or modification of the data that comes in. No configuration is required. This applies to the stream as well as any files that are referenced. It is entirely possible that certain players are sensitive to the resync of the frames at the point of the changeover. So what you are seeing icecast sending the data in a passthrough manner but the player is not handling a resync to a frame.

I do have some work to help in that regard but it's not complete yet but the initial tests seem positive.

karl.

[heartsofspace21]

Thanks, Karl. I'm looking for a method to accomplish this. We have our audio files already encoded in 128k and 64k HE-AAC, and 32k AAC+. We do not want to "re-encode" lossy files in order to pass the signal to Icecast. What "encoder" client or method can be used to play and passthrough these file types to Icecast?

Many thanks,

Joseph
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[karlH]

I don't know of any source client that can pass AAC files to icecast. vlc could I suppose but I don't know how that would work out The licensing limits what people are prepared to code for which is why we push for vorbis.

karl.

[jorgosch]

Winamp comes with an AAC+ encoder. Edcast can be used to pass this format to Icecast.



Other than that, I wouldn't know of any source client either that sends data "as is" to Icecast.

[heartsofspace21]

Thanks, jorgosch. Edcast could be the magic bullet we're looking for. We'll give it a shot.

With gratitude,

Joseph
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[heartsofspace21]

Also, Wikipedia says there is a version of Edcast for Linux. I don't find it on the site. Any ideas where to find it?

Thanks again!

Joseph
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[iunderwood]

Even if you get EdCast for Linux, it's not going to be able to do any of the AAC+ pieces you require as the same applies to the StreamTranscoder software which is pretty much based on a similar codebase.

Personally, I've had very poor luck with fallback files, but that was also a fair amount of time ago. I've used EZStream to send out a file over and over as a fallback with no real issues.
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[robertut]

Edcast has a nice feature to archive the stream locally (Advanced settings > Save Archive of Stream).

Create a test-mountpoint, enable the Save Archive of Stream option and stream to that mountpoint with Edcast the files you'd like to have later as a fallback (from Winamp Playlist for example). Make sure the format is exactly the same as the format you use in the real live stream you want to make the fallback for. The archived files will have the exact structure of the live stream, and intro/fallback mechanism will work on them with Icecast.

Just move the created files to Icecast server, set up the fallback mounts and options, and that's all.

[heartsofspace21]

Thanks, everyone, for your help. We're not really looking for "fallback" files. All we need is the ability to use a Linux encoder to "pass through" already encoded AAC files to Icecast. We don't want to "encode" or "re-encode" the files. They're just dandy as they are.

Can Edcast for Linux or IceS for Linux be used to pass through already-encoded AAC and AAC+ files to Icecast streaming server?

Thank you!

Joseph
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www.hos.com

[sg]

My understanding is that iceS 0.4 is used for passthrough for mp3 files.

I recently compiled it, and sent some mp3 streams off streaming.

Then i tried to test it with an .m4a file.

ices -h localhost -p 800 -P foo -F /var/www/html/128k.txt -m Test1 -v -t http
Logfile opened
DEBUG: Sending following information to libshout:
DEBUG: Stream: 0
DEBUG: Host: localhost:800 (protocol: http)
DEBUG: Mount: /Test1, Password: foo
DEBUG: Name: Default stream name URL: http://www.icecast.org/
DEBUG: Genre: Default genre Desc: Default description
DEBUG: Bitrate: 128 Public: 1
DEBUG: Dump file: (null)
DEBUG: Initializing playlist handler...
DEBUG: Initializing builting playlist handler...
DEBUG: Startup complete

DEBUG: Builtin playlist handler serving: /var/www/html/128k.m4a
DEBUG: Filename cleaned up from [/var/www/html/128k.m4a] to [128k]
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 824398
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 843370
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 862134
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 878764
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 880671
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 886314
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 889113
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 889532
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 893292
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 894187
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 902407
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 914080
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 915151
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 916678
DEBUG: Bad frame at offset 921019

looks like mp3.c may have definitions of how to handle the stream type.

Would it be possible to modify mp3.c so that is supported passing through an already encoded aac file?

Am I barking up the right tree?

[iunderwood]

Since I've had both rest and coffee, here is my coherent response to this thread.

The only client I have seen which appears to be able to just pass through files is EZStream, which can be found linked off the main IceCast website. Granted, this is limited to Ogg and MP3 files only. I know of no other utilities that perform a passthrough.

EdCast doesn't perform any pass through, but is rather a plugin which takes whatever the current output is and re-encodes it based upon whatever the encoder settings are.

If you're running a stream at multiple bitrates, you're probably better off using the best source quality you an afford and then transmitting your re-encodes after being encoded w/ EdCast or transcoded w/ StreamTranscoder.

I have used a 128k Ogg Vorbis stream w/ fallback as an input, followed by ST to output both a 64k Ogg and 64k AAC+ streams. I do this on a Windows platform because there is no AAC+ capability built into the open source variant, which is a touch unfortunate.

Unfortunately, neither EdCast nor StreamTranscoder have been actively developed for a number of years.
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[heartsofspace21]

Thanks, iunderwood.

Actually, our CDN has been using Ices v0.4 as a passthrough encoder for several years, so EZStream is apparently not the only choice. We're testing Ices v2.0 now to assess its passthrough capability.

It would be great if someone would post any information regarding how to modify Ices to handle the aac stream type within an m4a file. It seems as if the mp3.c component of Ices is what is throwing up the errror on parsing the format.

Thank you!

Joseph
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