How to stream your institution's existing IP Radio station:
Aim:
Here we will take an existing live mp3 stream from our fake institution and repurpose it so you can hear it live on your GPRS or 3G phone.
You must make sure before any broadcast that you have the all the licensing and paperwork in place.
To see proof of concept: - click here to download H.264 movie.
You will need QuickTime 7 player to view the file.
PC users - click here 14.7 Mb download.
What will you need:
Hardware: A nice Mac mini or spare Mac you may have to hand.
Software:
Download - iTunes up-date - for more info click here.
Download - Soundflower - for more info click here. Soundflower is open-source
Download - Detour - for more info click here. There is a small cost for Detour.
Download - QuickTime Broadcaster - for more info click here. QuickTime Broadcaster is free.
1. Download all the applications listed above and install them.
Then open up TextEdit, and create a new document in 'plain text' mode. Write the full path to the source of your mp3 stream, e.g. http://my_college_radio_server/my_college_radio_stream.mp3
After that, save your text but insted of .txt at the end of the file, put .m3u so we can open it in iTunes.
- Tip: a short cut to Applications folder when in the Finder is to press "Shift + Apple key + A"
2. Next we will double-click on our new .m3u file on the Desktop, in my case 'college_radio.m3u'.
You should now see iTunes open and your .m3u file added to your Library in iTunes.
Then select it and click play and do not quit iTunes.
3. Now we will set up Detour to take the output from iTunes and send it out to Soundflower.
- Open up 'System Preferences', scroll down to 'Other'. You should see 'Detour' and click on it.
- We'll add iTunes to our list of Detour applications. Click 'Add...' at the bottom right hand side of the preferences pane, then select 'iTunes' from the list.
- Tick iTunes as shown below in the screen shot.
- Then select 'Soundflower (2ch)' from Output Device for iTunes.
4. After configuring Detour, we are now ready to move onto QuickTime Broadcaster (in this case I'm using version 1.5).
- Transmission: Manual Unicast
- Address: Your Streaming Server IP address Whatever your Administrator has given you
- Audio Address: Your Streaming Server audio port number - Whatever your Administrator has given you
- Video Address: Your Streaming Server video port number - Whatever your Administrator has given you
- Buffer Delay: 3 - you can leave as default if you wish.
5. With the Video options, this is nice and simple. Just un-tick 'Enable Video Stream'. This is because we don't want to stream any video at all.
6. The last options we will look at here in QuickTime Broadcaster 1.5 are Audio.
- Enable Audio Stream: tick
- Preset: 3G - GPRS
- Source: Soundflower (2ch) - Soundflower (2ch)
- Play-though speaker: (your discretion but there is no point if the Mac is locked away in a server room)
- Gain (your discretion)
- Compressor: AMR Narrowband (this will be set up for you if you picked '3G - GPRS' from the Presets above)
- Rate: 8.000 kHz
- Size: 16 bit
- Use: Mono
7. For the fine-tuning of the audio settings, we will break it into two parts.
- Options...
- As this is only an audio stream then you can set this as high aso: 12.2 kbps tick
- Frames per sample: 5 (your discretion)
8. For delivering this over the web for your GPRS (or above) cell phone to view, then follow the settings below.
- Packetizer...
- RTP Payload: AMR Audio
- Packet Size Limit: 380 up to 480 bytes
- Packet duration: 100 milliseconds
9. Now it's time to save and edit the sdp file from QuickTime Broadcaster 1.5 File > Export > SDP and open it up in TextEdit.
The file has been edited but it should look something like this.
This is a clearer view of what the sdp file should look like.
- v=0
- o=- 2 3113929991 IN IP4 127.0.0.0
- t=0 0
- s=QuickTime
- c=IN IP4 10.0.1.230
- t=0 0
- a=range:npt=now-
- m=audio 5432 RTP/AVP 96
- a=rtpmap:96 AMR/8000/1
- a=fmtp:96 octet-align=1
- b=AS:12
- a=x-bufferdelay:3.000000
Here we edit the line that starts with s= and add the name of our radio station then save our file.
- v=0
- o=- 2 3113929991 IN IP4 127.0.0.0
- t=0 0
- s=Our radio station name
- c=IN IP4 10.0.1.230
- t=0 0
- a=range:npt=now-
- m=audio 5432 RTP/AVP 96
- a=rtpmap:96 AMR/8000/1
- a=fmtp:96 octet-align=1
- b=AS:12
- a=x-bufferdelay:3.000000
After editing, save your file and copy it over to your QuickTime Streaming Server. See Stage: 2 QuickTime Streaming Server.
