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

[David Gwynne]

On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 03:38, Geoff Shang wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> 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).
> 

There is something called mms_client that can listen to an mms stream
and write it to disk. Assuming you could get a player for the stream
once it hits the disk you could probably turn it into something thats
nicer to work with, such as mp3 or ogg. As suggested below, Icecast
would indeed suit you just fine.

You could take the stream off the network with mms_client and pipe it to
a player which could produce raw audio output which you in turn could
pipe to ices or ices2 (these are mp3 and ogg source generators for
icecast). You then tell ices or ices2 to push the stream to an icecast
server somewhere on your network. Then tell all your users to connect to
the icecast server for their web radio and you'll be fine. 

Complicated, but not necessarily impossible. I think the hardest part
would be finding a player that understands the codec used by mms.

DG

> > 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.
> 
> 
> 
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