We are a community FM broadcaster in rural Washington, USA. We have a Wowza server license and a dedicated Centos computer to host it. We need some help configuring the Wowza server and a Shoutcast server with either sc_trans or LiquidSoap.
The limitation we have at our host site is that we can only have a single stream into that site from our encoder. The ISP has mostly consumer customers so the upstream bandwidth is mostly unused and they have offered it to us in trade for underwriting mentions on the air.
We want the Wowza server to be our principal server, receiving a high quality/high bit rate AAC stream from the encoder (Telos Z/IPStreamer). We’d like to feed Shoutcast (or Icecast) server(s) to provide legacy MP3 and AAC streams (listen.pls and listen.asx) to older devices at a single bitrate (like 128 Kbps). The idea is that Wowza will provide all the supported stream transport methods and feed a stream to sc_trans or LiquidSoap to feed the Shoutcast server(s) for the legacies.
If you’ve done this and can help us do the configurations please contact me. We’re not a big commercial broadcast chain so money is tight, but we’re willing to pay for your time or a fixed amount. We really can’t afford to pay for you to learn how to do this.
Thanks, Bill
Hello Bill,
As of our most recent release and 4.5.0.01 update you can stream directly to an IceCast or ShoutCast service from your Wowza Streaming Engine Instance:
https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-stream-to-shoutcast-and-icecast
Please let me know if this solves your issue.
Regards,
Jason Hatchett
Hello Bill,
You are correct in the understanding that there is not currently an outbound protocol that you could place in a static .pls file to deliver to a ShoutCast capable player.
With the advent of HLS and it’s ability to deliver to both iOS and most newer Android devices I would not expect this to change.
The transcoding to MP3 is due to licensing so again you are correct that a separate transcoder would be need for that type of conversion.
There are internal discussions ongoing about doing more for the Audio Only clients, but I can not discuss the RoadMap and possibilities in this public forum.
Regards,
Jason Hatchett
Jason,
The new release of Wowza helps in that it lets a Wowza server feed a Shoutcast server downstream. What is missing is a way to transcode AAC to MP3. So, If we feed a single high quality AAC stream to the Wowza server we still have no way to feed an MP3 stream to the Shoutcast server from Wowza. The Wowza transcoder will transcode from MP3 to AAC but not from AAC to MP3. I don’t know what the issue is (perhaps licensing) but I’ve been told that the Transcoder will never transcode AAC to MP3. That’s why, in my post, I suggested an external transcoder like sc_trans or LiquidSoap.
We really don’t want to run a Shoutcast servers (they would be running on the same physical computer at the same location as the Wowza server) except that we have listener devices that need the “listen.pls” style streams and as far as I know Wowza can not create this kind of stream.
Wowza seems to be a streaming video server and oh, you can not send it the video part and it works for audio. The Audio only applications don’t seem to get as much attention even though you’d think they would be easier problems to solve. It’s a matter of market direction for Wowza and I can’t argue with it. It just makes Wowza, by design, functionally less rich than it could be for those of us who are primarily interested in audio streaming.
Bill