Hi all,

I've recently been put in charge of my school's choir website. The choir director wanted clips of our performances up, so I ripped the CD we had and put up MP3s. "Simple enough," I thought. Wrong.

From the people I've asked to test it, only three (including me) got it to work. One got it to stream but without sound. About five couldn't get it to stream, including one who couldn't load the file at all. If you want to try it too, PM me and I'll send a link over. I don't want to spread around what school I go to.

I'm now trying to figure out a way to get this to work for most people... I've considered trying to create a flash player, but I really think there's something simple I'm missing. What's the correct way to stream off a regular web server? Thanks.

Why bother streaming?

The cheap way to do it is to zip each file. Nobody should have any problem unzipping the .mp3 and playing it in their favorite mp3 prog.

Do you have to stream? Why don't you just link the mp3s?

This will make me look like an idiot... but anyway, I did link to the files and assumed that it would stream for most. I've since put up a notice asking for visitors to save the file instead of trying to stream if it's not working for them. I haven't tested this yet with the people that couldn't stream it.

That wasn't correct, was it?

Huh? I'm confused. So, the mp3 file is on the website, and you created a hyperlink to it? Is that right?

If so, then, it SHOULD work for people unless their mp3 plug-in is messed up.

Is it possible that the mp3s you created weren't good?

F

Just linking to it will cause it to download instead of stream. I think you are gonna need extra software on the server to get it to stream.

Found a program, MP3 Sound Stream. Might be pretty good.


PI you have PM.

I found a GREAT tutorial on this. It's very easy. I did this in less than 10 minutes to test. It streams. Verified by watching my net activity.

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/tutorial/ra.html

If you have any questions that the tutorial doesn't answer, PM me.

Yep, what I have at the moment are hyperlinks directly to the MP3s. I was under the impression that Quicktime or WMP would stream the songs for most people. Worked for three people (including me) out of about ten people total.

As for the MP3s, there's nothing wrong with it besides a few issues with the quality/clarity, but that's irrelevant. I don't see why people would be having problems actually downloading them, but admittedly that hasn't been tested.

Thanks for the program Landau, but something like that will be a tough sell for a school that apparently has budget issues. (I go to a school that seems to be having trouble affording paper, which I find fairly hard to believe.)

wuta, the link you posted worked great for me, and I'll try to test it out with other computers and ask other people tonight for results and post them. Two peculiar things though... it streamed on WMP for me, which was odd since my m3u files are associated with Winamp and I usually stream with Quicktime. Second, the progress bar showed no progress of how much of the song was done nor how much of it was downloaded. These are curious thoughts though... as long as it works, everyone is happy.

Thanks everyone for the help! I appreciate it.

I'll be checking that site out too wuta17g, thanks.

OK, now the 64,000 question - can I do video this way as well?

Jeff

If you try to play them directly in Winamp or WMP, etc., OR your browser hands the link over to one of these programs (e.g. Open With...), these *should* stream off of HTTP. On the other hand, if your browser handles mp3-associated MIME-types differently, almost anything can happen, from it being saved, or even just gibberish being "streamingly" displayed in the browser window.

If you *really* want to stream, you need a streaming server. The best option is Shoutcast, very easy to set up and free to boot, and streams in good old MP3 format.

Another thing you might want to look into (though I don't think it'd work with browsers other than IE) is to embed the Media Player ActiveX control into the page, meaning it would stream for everyone using IE.

Lastly, you could write up something with Macromedia Flash. Coding the audio in Flash's own format (instead of having the flash applet get mp3s from your server) would be easier I think; though I've never really done non-animation stuff with Flash.

fyi... zipping a mp3 will give you 0% compression... if you were to do it this way i would just leave them as mp3's

I realize that.

The only reason why I made the suggestion was that they could simply d/l all the songs as one .zip and play them on their own computer, rather than attempting to stream one mp3 at a time.