Web Gurus, ShoutCast Server

[RicharD]

Has anybody ever set up a ShoutCast server?  You wanna talk me through it?  I'd love to host a tube amp show.... among other thangs.  I appreciate any help making this thang happen.

Thanks!
-Richard

[PRR]

Google "ShoutCast server" turns up official docs, downloads, and forums.

It does not look awful.

I have done "live broadcast" with RealMedia's tools (I do NOT think you want to do RealMedia!). The concept seems similar. There is a public server which clients access. On a different machine you run a bit of Producer software. Tell it where your mic and camera are, it crunches them to a data-stream. Tell it some kind of "key" which authenticates you to the public server as a known uploader. Your program needs a name, and there may be other fields you can fill. Press Start and you are on the air.

As in some other fields, publicity (getting the word out) is harder than technicalities.

I probably spent a couple days setting up my own Real public server (with Shout you use their public servers), another day in arcane corners of the producer software; Shout's really better be a lot easier. I think I ended up with three PCs counting a client; Shout handles the one in the middle and with today's PCs you can probably produce and client on the same machine (risking feedback in speaker-mic).

You need an uplink path which is faster than your program datarate. I would not try video or good audio from here: the wire to Maine is long and congested, plus RR sharply caps my uplink speed to a fraction of anybody's downlink speed. For this and other reasons I would put shows in a can for non-real-time viewing.

And the basics. Mike close to mouth. Well padded room. GOOD light. Probably simple background; don't make the compression eat patterned wallpaper, it takes bandwidth away from important objects. Tele-prompter or ad-lib your choice, but do some full rehearsals to break-in the rough edges of your delivery and gain skill with camera and producer-ware.

[RicharD]

My main issue is my Linux skills are rusted shut.  "Use or lose em" play big with me and I lost em.  I understand about bandwidth and the merits of "in the can" programming.  I also realize I'll be broadcasting to 0 listeners, but I'd still like to mess with this.  I'll read the tutorials again but I really wasn't getting it the other night.

[PRR]

Can't use a Windows (or Mac) machine for the Producer?

I ran Real on Win-NT (shows how long ago it was). And Real's package was unix-like, though compiled for Windows. I expect ShoutCast's Win or Mac producer is nearly rip-and-run.

I was only doing audio. I doubt an Atom-powered NetBook has the horsepower to compress video in real-time.

[RicharD]

My website lives on a 32bit Linux machine.  Getting that end configured is where I got stuck.  I haven't had time to mess with it because SxSW is coming up, + my day job, + everything else has me running.  On top of all that, we just finished recording our LP so most of my web-time has been filled with pricing vinyl, learning about licensing, bar codes, getting wet with iTunes and other digital downloads.  Ya know... living the dream.  I should probably get DummyLoad to help me.