Internet Streaming

WELCOME TO THE FOLD

So, you want to be an Internet Broadcaster...congratulations! TuneTracker System™ does it well. Here's what you need to do, to set up for it:

1.   Go into SoundPlay Preferences, and under Filters, find the "Live Encoder" option in the filters list. Drag the Live Encoder filter from the left pane to the right one, to activate it.
   
   
   
2.   If it's not already being displayed, click on the Station Settings tab. Set the port to the standard 8000, or select another port setting if your special situation requires it. The other fields of information here can contain whatever you'd like, to identify your radio station.
   
   
   
3.   Click on the Encoder Settings tab. For MP3 streaming select lame 3.66 as the encoder unless you want to use the Ogg Vorbis codec. You will find a variety of options that let you select the specific bitrate (quality) you want to broadcast at, choose whether it will be stereo or mono, etc. For most situations, the variety of presets shown should include all the options you require. You can customize them, but we recommend the ones already there. Sometimes "tweaking" creates weird effects. If you want to do MP3 streaming but don't see the lame option, you need to the Lame encoder, available at this URL. If your download is a .pkg file, it will place everything where it belongs. If it's a zip file, be sure to unzip a copy of the "lame" encoder file into the following location on your boot drive:
   
   /boot/home/config/bin
   
   
   
4.   Now, set up your router to "port forward" the port number you selected in SoundPlay LiveEncoder. For example, if the number was 8000, then 8000 must be forwarded to the IP address of your TuneTracker computer; a feature you need to enable in your router, based on the instructions in your router manual. You can find out the IP address of your TuneTracker computer in BeOS network preferences. You may need the assistance of someone experienced in networking, such as a technician from your Internet Service Provider or your company's I.T. department to complete this task.
   
   
   
5.   Determine your Internet connection's IP address, so you can share that on your web site as the link users should use when connecting to your broadcast. If you have a static IP address, which is very desirable for any long-term broadcast use, you can find out what it is by asking your Internet Service Provider. If not, you can learn your current IP address here. When directing listeners to your audio stream, tell them to go to your IP address and port, expressed as follows:
   
   (example) http://12.34.55.679:8000
   
   As you can see, it is expressed as your IP address, a colon, then the port number you specified in your LiveEnocder preferences.

SETTING UP MULTIPLE BITRATES

Depending on how much bandwidth is available to you, you might even want to supply a couple different Internet streams...one low-bandwidth one for dial-up users (such as 16 kbps mono) and one higher bandwidth signal for DSL and cable listeners (such as 56 kbps stereo).


If you do want to add another stream at a different bitrate, drag a second LiveEncoder to the Active window pane and set that one up as well. As with the first, you must give it a unique port address and tell your router to forward that port to your TuneTracker computer's IP address.

Theoretically, you can set up as many different streams as you like. The TuneTracker-powered station BeOSRADIO broadcasts simultaneously at 16k mono and 64k stereo, at the same time, without a hitch, and we know from past experience we could still add others if we wanted to. Ultimately, the number of different bitrates you can handle is related to your system's processing power and the bandwidth of your network connection.


IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW

•   Never directly close a LiveEncoder window, unless you want to lose its settings. Rather, after setting up your LiveEncoder window, leave it active, and close the main SoundPlay program instead. This will assure that SoundPlay will remember the encoder settings so they will reappear each time the program is launched. Otherwise, you'll have to set them back up when you relaunch SoundPlay.
  
  
  
•   In older SoundPlay versions: If SoundPlay will not close due to multiple encoders being open, do not kill SoundPlay, but instead, do a CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the team monitor, find the "lame" or "oggenc" instances you see there, and systematically kill them until SoundPlay closes. You should only have to perform that interesting little procedure once, and after that SoundPlay should remember your LiveEncoder setup(s) just fine. If you make changes, repeat the procedure to again save and close SoundPlay.
  
  
  
•   If TuneTracker™ detects a problem in SoundPlay, it will kill the program and relaunch it, which in earlier versions of SoundPlay could leave "orphaned" encoders sitting in memory. For that reason, we have provided an option in TuneTracker™ Preferences which lets you specify the name of your encoder plug-in so it can be killed along with SoundPlay in those instances. If you opt to do so, express it as the full path and filename, such as /boot/home/config/bin/lame .

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