iPhone patches question

[Bob MacCallum-2]

Hi,

I'm just wondering what kind of functionality the iPhone patches
proposed on the list provide (e.g.
http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast-dev/2008-November/001798.html)

For example will track name metadata be displayed (in the iPhone
quicktime player, I presume)?

Assuming the answer is 'yes' to the above, will I need to provide a
direct link to the icecast stream (rather than through a .pls file
download, as I currently do), and will that need to end in .mp3 or
have a specific mime type?

Sorry for all the questions.  I don't have an iPhone and so can't
answer any of them easily myself.

many thanks,
Bob.
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[Christopher Zenzel]

Hi Bob,

I am thinking that metadata could be streamed to the iPhone with some additonal work. There are some possible methods including wrapping a custom interface (either a Web App or iPhone SDK App) to check with a server script to grab metadata and display it as its streaming the Icecast MP3 Format.

For example:

There would be two domains such as icecast.server and metadata.server on the Internet. The icecast.server runs the latest Icecast release version with the iPhone patches. The metadata.server would run a script that can check for metadata either from a database or the Icecast server to display in a XML format.

Then a display page such as web.server/display.php/htm would contact the metadata server and display its information and have an embeeded CoreMedia or Quicktime Player to play the stream from the actual icecast server.

With the use of AJAX or automated checking in the page, you could check the metadata server's script every 3-25 seconds to return XML to be displayed such as:

<metadata><title>Stream Title</title><song>A Song</song><artist>An Artist</artist></metadata>

and display it with the XMLHTTPRequest object that both the iPhone and Desktop Safari provides...

The built in Safari and Quicktime Player may be limited by certain things to prevent it from showing metadata on screen. The goals of the patches that I posted allow direct streaming on the iPhone without any additonal applications. You would need to point the browser or quicktime player directly to the stream (icecast.server/stream.mp3).

There are some players such as WunderRadio on the App Store that allow custom URLs and support metadata without modification of the Icecast or Windows Media servers to support the iPhone. The WunderRadio app costs about 5-6 dollars.

Thanks,
Christopher Zenzel
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[oddsock]

As of right now, you are out of luck in terms of instream metadata with the embedded quicktime player that's distributed with the iphone OS.  As Christopher says, there are many ways to get the same effect, but they ALL require you to build custom iPhone apps.  There are a whole mess of radio apps out there, and they are all pretty similar, and NONE of them use the embedded quicktime object.

The icecast patch that I wrote (and Christopher extended) just worked at a HTTP header/response level to pretty much "pretend" to be a "progressive download" server, which is the only type of streaming supported by the iphone quicktime object.  It works great for certain cases, but falls a bit short in others.

Another nice thing (NOT) about the quicktime object is that it's fullscreen and doesn't work in anything but, which means that you can't use the technique Christopher suggests about having an AJAX "poller" for the metadata because if you are using the quicktime object, it takes up the entire screen and you have no ability to change it or change any of the text that it displays.  Thank you Apple!

Ed

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Christopher Zenzel <czenzel@...> wrote:

Hi Bob,

I am thinking that metadata could be streamed to the iPhone with some additonal work. There are some possible methods including wrapping a custom interface (either a Web App or iPhone SDK App) to check with a server script to grab metadata and display it as its streaming the Icecast MP3 Format.

For example:

There would be two domains such as icecast.server and metadata.server on the Internet. The icecast.server runs the latest Icecast release version with the iPhone patches. The metadata.server would run a script that can check for metadata either from a database or the Icecast server to display in a XML format.

Then a display page such as web.server/display.php/htm would contact the metadata server and display its information and have an embeeded CoreMedia or Quicktime Player to play the stream from the actual icecast server.

With the use of AJAX or automated checking in the page, you could check the metadata server's script every 3-25 seconds to return XML to be displayed such as:

<metadata><title>Stream Title</title><song>A Song</song><artist>An Artist</artist></metadata>

and display it with the XMLHTTPRequest object that both the iPhone and Desktop Safari provides...

The built in Safari and Quicktime Player may be limited by certain things to prevent it from showing metadata on screen. The goals of the patches that I posted allow direct streaming on the iPhone without any additonal applications. You would need to point the browser or quicktime player directly to the stream (icecast.server/stream.mp3).

There are some players such as WunderRadio on the App Store that allow custom URLs and support metadata without modification of the Icecast or Windows Media servers to support the iPhone. The WunderRadio app costs about 5-6 dollars.

Thanks,
Christopher Zenzel

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[Greg J. Ogonowski]

When the Tuner2 iPhone Player hits the Apple iTunes Apps Store, this should solve everyone's player problem:

http://www.indexcom.com/iphone.html

There is a lot of information on this page. It tells an interesting story about audio quality.

This player is not an Orban project.

-greg.
ORBAN



At 18:16 2009-03-16, oddsock wrote:

As of right now, you are out of luck in terms of instream metadata with the embedded quicktime player that's distributed with the iphone OS.  As Christopher says, there are many ways to get the same effect, but they ALL require you to build custom iPhone apps.  There are a whole mess of radio apps out there, and they are all pretty similar, and NONE of them use the embedded quicktime object.

The icecast patch that I wrote (and Christopher extended) just worked at a HTTP header/response level to pretty much "pretend" to be a "progressive download" server, which is the only type of streaming supported by the iphone quicktime object.  It works great for certain cases, but falls a bit short in others.

Another nice thing (NOT) about the quicktime object is that it's fullscreen and doesn't work in anything but, which means that you can't use the technique Christopher suggests about having an AJAX "poller" for the metadata because if you are using the quicktime object, it takes up the entire screen and you have no ability to change it or change any of the text that it displays.  Thank you Apple!

Ed
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Christopher Zenzel <czenzel@...> wrote:

Hi Bob,

I am thinking that metadata could be streamed to the iPhone with some additonal work. There are some possible methods including wrapping a custom interface (either a Web App or iPhone SDK App) to check with a server script to grab metadata and display it as its streaming the Icecast MP3 Format.

For example:

There would be two domains such as icecast.server and metadata.server on the Internet. The icecast.server runs the latest Icecast release version with the iPhone patches. The metadata.server would run a script that can check for metadata either from a database or the Icecast server to display in a XML format.

Then a display page such as web.server/display.php/htm would contact the metadata server and display its information and have an embeeded CoreMedia or Quicktime Player to play the stream from the actual icecast server.

With the use of AJAX or automated checking in the page, you could check the metadata server's script every 3-25 seconds to return XML to be displayed such as:

<metadata><title>Stream Title</title><song>A Song</song><artist>An Artist</artist></metadata>

and display it with the XMLHTTPRequest object that both the iPhone and Desktop Safari provides...

The built in Safari and Quicktime Player may be limited by certain things to prevent it from showing metadata on screen. The goals of the patches that I posted allow direct streaming on the iPhone without any additonal applications. You would need to point the browser or quicktime player directly to the stream (icecast.server/stream.mp3).

There are some players such as WunderRadio on the App Store that allow custom URLs and support metadata without modification of the Icecast or Windows Media servers to support the iPhone. The WunderRadio app costs about 5-6 dollars.

Thanks,

Christopher Zenzel

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__________________________________________________________________________
Greg J. Ogonowski
VP Product Development
ORBAN / CRL, Inc.
Diamond Bar, CA  91765  USA
greg@...
http://www.orban.com

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[Bob MacCallum-2]

Thanks all.  I've been looking at the Tuner (by Nullriver) app as a
hypothetical solution (since I have no iPhone).  I'll point my users
to WunderRadio too, in case they already have it.  If Tuner2 handles
.pls playlists (a necessity for me because my icecast server is on a
dynamic IP) then I'll recommend that too (when it's available).

I've heard that apps don't background.   So when you switch from the
radio app to another app, the music will stop.  Is that correct?
Switching from audio stream player to web browser is critical for my
application (interactive evolutionary music at
http://evolectronica.com).  I imagine it would be really nice to
evolve tunes when out and about!

A dedicated free app for Evolectronica would be really nice, but I
don't have the time for it, or enough love for Apple...

thanks again,
Bob.

2009/3/17 Greg Ogonowski <greg@...>:

> When the Tuner2 iPhone Player hits the Apple iTunes Apps Store, this should
> solve everyone's player problem:
>
> http://www.indexcom.com/iphone.html
>
> There is a lot of information on this page. It tells an interesting story
> about audio quality.
>
> This player is not an Orban project.
>
> -greg.
> ORBAN
>
>
>
> At 18:16 2009-03-16, oddsock wrote:
>
> As of right now, you are out of luck in terms of instream metadata with the
> embedded quicktime player that's distributed with the iphone OS.  As
> Christopher says, there are many ways to get the same effect, but they ALL
> require you to build custom iPhone apps.  There are a whole mess of radio
> apps out there, and they are all pretty similar, and NONE of them use the
> embedded quicktime object.
>
> The icecast patch that I wrote (and Christopher extended) just worked at a
> HTTP header/response level to pretty much "pretend" to be a "progressive
> download" server, which is the only type of streaming supported by the
> iphone quicktime object.  It works great for certain cases, but falls a bit
> short in others.
>
> Another nice thing (NOT) about the quicktime object is that it's fullscreen
> and doesn't work in anything but, which means that you can't use the
> technique Christopher suggests about having an AJAX "poller" for the
> metadata because if you are using the quicktime object, it takes up the
> entire screen and you have no ability to change it or change any of the text
> that it displays.  Thank you Apple!
>
> Ed
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Christopher Zenzel <czenzel@...> wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> I am thinking that metadata could be streamed to the iPhone with some
> additonal work. There are some possible methods including wrapping a custom
> interface (either a Web App or iPhone SDK App) to check with a server script
> to grab metadata and display it as its streaming the Icecast MP3 Format.
>
> For example:
>
> There would be two domains such as icecast.server and metadata.server on the
> Internet. The icecast.server runs the latest Icecast release version with
> the iPhone patches. The metadata.server would run a script that can check
> for metadata either from a database or the Icecast server to display in a
> XML format.
>
> Then a display page such as web.server/display.php/htm would contact the
> metadata server and display its information and have an embeeded CoreMedia
> or Quicktime Player to play the stream from the actual icecast server.
>
> With the use of AJAX or automated checking in the page, you could check the
> metadata server's script every 3-25 seconds to return XML to be displayed
> such as:
>
> <metadata><title>Stream Title</title><song>A Song</song><artist>An
> Artist</artist></metadata>
>
> and display it with the XMLHTTPRequest object that both the iPhone and
> Desktop Safari provides...
>
> The built in Safari and Quicktime Player may be limited by certain things to
> prevent it from showing metadata on screen. The goals of the patches that I
> posted allow direct streaming on the iPhone without any additonal
> applications. You would need to point the browser or quicktime player
> directly to the stream (icecast.server/stream.mp3).
>
> There are some players such as WunderRadio on the App Store that allow
> custom URLs and support metadata without modification of the Icecast or
> Windows Media servers to support the iPhone. The WunderRadio app costs about
> 5-6 dollars.
>
> Thanks,
> Christopher Zenzel
> _______________________________________________
> Icecast-dev mailing list
> Icecast-dev@...
> http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast-dev
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Icecast-dev mailing list
> Icecast-dev@...
> http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast-dev
>
> __________________________________________________________________________
> Greg J. Ogonowski
> VP Product Development
> ORBAN / CRL, Inc.
> Diamond Bar, CA  91765  USA
> greg@...
> http://www.orban.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Icecast-dev mailing list
> Icecast-dev@...
> http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast-dev
>
>

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