[H-GEN] streaming audio splitter/proxy/reflector

[Geoff Shang]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Peter Arnold wrote:

> after some convolutions takes you to the actual stream URL of
> http://203.147.162.145/Parliament.asx . The contents of this (curiously
> it's a file) is:

Yeah, this is standard procedure.  Pretty much all streaming solutions use
a file like this to launch the required player.  The browser downloads the
playlist, then hands it off to the required player.  The player opens the
file and then opens the URL referenced in the playlist.   So the actual
stream URL is the one in the ASX file, in this case.


> tcpdump shows incoming traffic from this server as http so I prusume it's
> mms over http???

I put in an HTTP request to this URL and it didn't return anything helpful.
Certainly nothing that would look like streaming media.  Presumably MMS has
a different syntax to HTTP, even if it is on port 80 (which does surprise
me I admit, but I know almost nothing about MMS).

> Options I'm looking for are:
> 1) maybe a straight streaming media proxy server of some description.
> Squid will proxy it but not split it as such. There are various
> proxy/reflectors available like helix and Apple's Darwin but they seem to
> be for proprietry protocols and I'm not quite sure they are what I'm
> after.

As far as I know, MMS is Microsoft's proprietory protocol (this is a
Windows Media stream after all), so if anything can help, those might.  But
AFAIK, there's no WM support available in Linux, except perhaps in some of
Real's Helix tools (and it's probably not the free stuff).

> 2) a streaming media server of some description that will read in one
> stream then re-serve it out to multiple clients. I could probably redirect
> clients from original URL to new URL using squid here.

Well, you could always use a Windows box to grab the original and re-encode
it to something more manageable.  Not sure what choices you'd have if it's
video however, but if it's only audio then you probably have some decent
options.

> If there's someone who has a clue here I'd appreciate some assistance as I
> have no experience in streaming media technologies. Oh and obviously I'm
> after something open source :)

Shame this isn't Ogg or MP3, as Icecast's relaying fascilities would suit
you just fine.

Geoff.