[olug] linux streaming servers

[Patrick McNeil]

Ryan,

You need a streaming server if you are looking at doing some fancy things
like:
- Multicast (which you can't do over the Internet)
- Live streams (Streaming radio, TV, security cameras, etc)
- MP3 Radio (where you will send them a series of yet to be determined
content)

If all you are serving up is movie files (WMV, ASF, MOV, AVI, etc) or
Music (MP3, WMA, AAC, etc) then you can stream it via HTTP.

As for the easy to use, the end user doesn't notice the difference if the
link is from a streaming server or a web server, its still just a link to
the end user.

I have used Windows Media server and IIS / Apache to serve streaming files
before and they both work the same for files.  Using a streaming server
will get you more statistics (if you care about them) for jitter, resent
frames, etc.  Most people don't look at the log files for that anyway,
just how many viewers do we have.

Patrick

> I'm starting to look into options to offer audio or video streaming from
> our web portal software written in ColdFusion.  Has any had experience
> with seting up streaming servers on linux?
>
> I'm not sure why a server is even necessary.  Most players can start
> playing an .mp3 file or .mov file or whatever right away, you don't have
> to download the whole file first.  Is a streaming server only necessary
> when you want people to be able to view/hear live content?
>
> I've started to do a little research.  It seems there is an open source
> product called Shoutcast, or at least a product that uses a protocol
> called Shoutcast.  Ever used this?  I did a search for some Shoutcast
> content, and found a radio station that offered it.  Winamp popped up and
> started playing the stream right away.
>
> We will need something that is easy for people to use.  Do you think most
> people have Winamp installed on their computer?
>
> Thanks for any input.
> -Ryan
>
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