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i c e c a s t
` ` ` ` ` `
Introduction
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Icecast is an Internet based broadcasting system based on the Mpeg Layer III
streaming technology. It is, however, not limited to streaming mp3 files.
It was originally inspired by Nullsoft's Shoutcast and also mp3serv by Scott Manley.
The icecast project was started for several
reasons: a) all broadcasting systems were pretty much closed source,
non-free software implementations, b) Shoutcast doesn't allow you to run your
own directory servers, or support them, and c) we thought it would be a
lot of fun.
Icecast is almost completely Shoutcast compatible as far as we've been
able to determine. WinAmp can both send encoded streams as well as stream
music from icecast. Icecast can also use the yp.shoutcast.com directory
services and adds the ability to use other directory services.
There are lots of reasons to run Icecast instead of shoutcast. It uses less
cpu and memory resources, you can have several streams per server, you can use
multiple directory servers, administration is simple through either telnet,
console, or the WWW interface. Icecast has an exhaustive list of features,
most of which are simple to use, and some that will take some time to learn.
There are lots of tools to use with icecast.
Some examples are: shout, liveice, icedir, iceplay, and icesource.
Shout is a C program to provide streaming of mp3 files to icecast. It has
many command line options - read about them in README.shout. This is the
recommended streamer for icecast.
Iceplay is a simple perl script that will stream a playlist of MP3 files to
an icecast server (it will also work with a Shoutcast server). This is the
first Linux based "encoder" that we know of. This is no longer in
progress, and don't use it. It's too old :)
Liveice is another streamer, but instead of just sending the mp3 files
as is, liveice decodes the files (using a external mp3 decoding engine),
and reencodes them at a specified bitrate (also using an external engine).
You can mix multiple mp3 files and Mic input and be a real DJ :)
Icesource is a new generation Shout using the libshout library. It's new
and under heavy development. This will be the recommended streamer for
icecast in the future.
The directory services component (icedir) can be used with any web server
setup with PHP and Mysql. We have also provided the interface
specification so that anyone who wishes to write directory server software
has all the information that they need. If you point a Shoutcast server
to a icedir directory service, it works fine.
License
~~~~~~~
Icecast, a streaming audio server
Copyright (C) 1999 Jack Moffitt, Barath Raghavan, and Alexander Havng
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
contacts and webpage
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The main webpage for icecast is http://www.icecast.org
Please send any suggestions, bugfixes, or anything else to
devel@icecast.org
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