Streaming

Well I am the "webmaster" of the station where I work and I have been given the task of looking into the possibility of sreaming the station's signal. There are three FMs and one AM. The FMs will be top priority. I'm wondering how to do this. I know the audio has to be encoded and sent to/from a server capable enough for many listeners to access the audio. We would probably stream a live feed from the console. and this is where I get lost. How do other stations do this? We do have a cable connection to the internet, but I know that would not be sufficient to do this so I figure the ISP could do thst part. How then do we get the audio from the console to the ISP? Do we have to have a server on the station side or just a simple PC with encoding software and a direct connection (i.e. T-1 etc) to the ISP and then the users connect to them to hear the stream. Also what are the leagal implications of streaming your over the air signal on the internet. Please help!!

Legally, you can't stream the commercials you broadcast, even if the client pays.  You must produce "web only" commercials.  There's also some stuff dealing with music royalties, but I'm not familiar enough with it to give any advice.  What I can tell you, is that you need to deal with the legal end before you even begin to think about the technical end.

Good luck!

Emmett

And just to give you an idea of how tricky streaming is becoming John, you cannot listen to the streams of UK stations outside the UK, the authroities made it so your IP is checked when you try and if you're not in Britain you can't hear it. Easy to get around by changing your IP if you know how to do it .. so they tell me.

Emmett's right, there are many legal issues to resolve before you tackle the technical issues associated with streaming.  Music royalties are going to be #1 on the list, followed by checking contracts with networks and syndicators regarding streaming. 

Many smaller market stations only stream locally produced sporting events because they don't have to sorry about making additional music royalty payments. 

As far as streaming commercials, I believe that in house produced commercials are streamable without any additional negotiations unless your stations are covered by an AFTRA contract.  Network commercials and those from agencies are another story.  Some may be voiced by union VO artists and some may not.  Finding out which you can stream may be more trouble than it's worth.  However, I'm not a lawyer and have never played one on radio, TV or Broadway, so call someone who has the diploma. 

Dave

Thanks guys I'm still learning alot about this streaming stuff. It must be getting easier as there are a lot of stations in our area doing it now. I mentioned the leagal aspects of it to my PD and he says that we would have to talk with the corporate lawyers on that and I suppose we will have to talk with some of the agencies that do business with us. I was mainly looking at the technical side of it. At least that was what my PD wanted me to do so that's how I've been approaching it. SO let's assume that we have all the leagal ese taken care of then what next? How to get the air signal from the console (from the program bus) to your PC.

John, I think this will involve having one dedicated PC which is used for that and nothing else, which streams out the audio from the desk .. or the transmitter .. or .. don't know, hopefully someone else will chip in.

John, I think this will involve having one dedicated PC which is used for that and nothing else, which streams out the audio from the desk .. or the transmitter .. or .. don't know, hopefully someone else will chip in.

Yeah I'm sure of this part. I am wondering if this PC would be a server or just a standard desktop PC obviously connected to a T1 connection to the ISP who would do the actual streaming for multiple users. Or would this studio side PC do all the work. There are so many options it's a little overwhelming. Our corporate engineer said that it would cost more than it was worth, but I think he just doesn't want to do it or doesn't believe in streaming, who knows.

You can use a decent desktop PC - any new machine in last few years should be more than capable.

A simple professional sound card should be used, though you could get away with an on-board. We use an E-MU 0404.

Depending on the quality of the stream you want - you could get away with a fast DSL link - you shouldn't need a T1 unless you were running a server! Sending a 56K encoded stream to a server for instance, would take 56K of bandwidth going upstream.

The machine should be dedicated to the encoding task.

Various encoding software:

- Real - try RealProducer Basic (free version). HelixProducer is paid alternative.
- MP3 - Winamp and Oddcast are a decent manner of encoding MP3s
- Windows Media Encoder - Get from Microsoft site

Lots of other out there, they are main varieties of streams.

Only other thing you'd need is a provider to cast your streams for you.

Licenses: haven't a clue what they doing with this, UK rules are very confusing and silly idea of limiting to country is ridiculous!

Hope that is a decent overview.

Various encoding software:

- Real - try RealProducer Basic (free version). HelixProducer is paid alternative.
- MP3 - Winamp and Oddcast are a decent manner of encoding MP3s
- Windows Media Encoder - Get from Microsoft site

Lots of other out there, they are main varieties of streams.

Can you have all three encoders on the PC and send one stream to the ISP or is it one encoder only deal? If a 56k stream is all that is going up then yes either DSL or cable would be the cheapest alternative. We already have cable for the office internet access, but I think adding this upstream would bog it down. Maybe we could get a second cable modem and use it exclusively for this one PC.

Can you have all three encoders on the PC and send one stream to the ISP or is it one encoder only deal? If a 56k stream is all that is going up then yes either DSL or cable would be the cheapest alternative. We already have cable for the office internet access, but I think adding this upstream would bog it down. Maybe we could get a second cable modem and use it exclusively for this one PC.

Nothing to stop you having more than one encoder, but for a single stream, you'll only be able to use one...

It's worth noting that most cable systems are asynchronous - generally the bandwidth of the upstream is considerably less than the bandwidth of the downstream, and yes,  it's primarily the upstream you are concerned with here. I did this a couple of years ago at 56k using RealProducer and a shared upstream link, and I have to say that it wasn't totally wonderful, although most of the time it was fine. I do totally agree with the 'dedicated machine' concept though - you really don't want anything else happening on the streaming machine at all.

You would need not only a modem, but a second cable link to your supplier to do what you are suggesting. You may not need to go to all that trouble, though. It's worth talking to your cable provider initially - generally cable systems have a lot more capacity in them than any one user purchases the use of, and it may well be that they can beef up your existing bandwidth sufficiently to let you use what's already there without any difficulty at all, as long as you pay them! Generally it helps as well if the stream comes from a fixed IP address, but with the always-on cable systems we have these days, I don't think that this is such a problem, and nothing like the problem it is with auto-dialling ADSL telephone modems, which are a royal PITA to use for this purpose unless you take stringent precautions to stop timeouts, etc.

The one thing that I did find with RealProducer was that it was, certainly at that time, quite capable of disconnecting itself and the stream at the slightest provovation. I know that other people have experienced this too, and I believe that there are one or two auto-reconnect programs around which can save a lot of hassle when the stream stops unaccountably during unattended operation. Maybe things have moved on though? I haven't had to look at this for a while now.

I've used WinAmp with the ShoutCast plugin on a semi-dedicated server at my house. In conjunction with a dynamic name server, I was able to stream 96 bit audio with relative success- but you have to remember that this uses quite a bit of the available 256 or 384 kbps upstream bandwidth that is typical with DSL or cable. I would think that a live stream from a popular radio program would quickly populate the stream server past capacity using a DSL or cable connection.

There is (was) a plugin for live input; i.e. whatever comes through the microphone input. I don't think that would allow a stereo output, however.

Good luck!

RealProducer can be very dodgy if you aren't using a great server. I've run a number of encoding tasks simultaneously on one machine without a problem if you have decent bandwidth and good sound card i.e MP3 - Oddcast/RealProducer (free). Mostly for encoding, depends on your connection. Here in the UK I use a ADSL connection - supposed 8MB. In our network we use a dedicated NAT router/firewall. The streaming traffic is given priority. The connection and its reliability comes into question occasionally. I have to reboot the machine every so often - totally different frequencies of problem. ADSL isn't 100% and sometimes requires reset. If you wanted 100% you would need to be on SDSL or some kind of cable. Also depends on reliability of your casting server of course. We have a subscription membership which allows us to use 2 servers - the MP3 being quite stable.

You would need a fairly modern PC to run different tasks at the same time. From last 3-4 years. I run a logging utility - for saving shows. One streaming utility (ditched Real as our server was crap), Processing plugin (sometimes, being experimenting) and Webcam (though now moved this to a dedicated P166!!!). Make sure PC is lean and keen in terms of being kept updated, virus free, spyware free, free of not essential rubbish, etc).

Hope that helps, once you get started its not too difficult to get working. Just concentrate on the content!!!

 

I'm using DarkIce (encoder) and IceCast (streaming server) under Linux for a local radio station.
The PC is an old Pentium III at 500MHz, CPU load is stable at 66% encoding a 112kbps OGG stream.
Clients listen to the stream using Winamp.

This is the type of machine you boot up once and then just place it in some dark corner to colect dust :p

I've used WinAmp with the ShoutCast plugin on a semi-dedicated server at my house. In conjunction with a dynamic name server, I was able to stream 96 bit audio with relative success- but you have to remember that this uses quite a bit of the available 256 or 384 kbps upstream bandwidth that is typical with DSL or cable. I would think that a live stream from a popular radio program would quickly populate the stream server past capacity using a DSL or cable connection.

There is (was) a plugin for live input; i.e. whatever comes through the microphone input. I don't think that would allow a stereo output, however.

Good luck!

Yes there is a line-in plug in for WinAmp and it is a stereo one. You just have to tweak the settings in it's .ini file to get it in stereo. I use it on my home PC all the time.

Thanks to all for your suggestions and comments. I have passed my report on to the General Manager and I figure that it is in the "planning" stage with management. I will keep you updated. Our cable company does offer upgrade upstream capacity and I suppose whatever management decides to do that would be what we get. We will see.

For those experienced with streaming technology, the next step up is AAC+. Have a look around this site:
http://www.opticodec.com/index.html