Building a Simple Streaming Media Server?

neomage86 asks: "I'm looking for a simple Network Jukebox. I want to be able to stream media from a Windows (it has to be Windows for other school work) server to remote machines over a LAN (only 1-2 clients at a time). I want to be able to choose the song that's playing from the remote machine, video would be nice, but not necessary, and it should be free (as in beer, I'm a student). Any ideas?"

"For some quick background, I'm an undergrad with a desktop PVR with several hundred gigs of media on it. I also have a laptop, and use computer labs fairly often. Anywhere on campus, I can expect to get a minimum of 10 megabits/s between my current machine and the PVR. My first thought was just Windows file sharing, but it breaks often (I'm not sure why, I have an Apache web server, and FileZilla ftp server running on the same machine that never go down) and I can't install Samba on the Solaris lab machines. Ideally the client should be web based, so I don't need to download anything to receive, but that is optional."

Check out VLC....

[(H)elix1]

http://www.videolan.org/ Multiplatform, works great.

Re:Check out VLC....

[tibike77]

That one was my first thought too as I started reading the question, but then suddendly I read this "[...]able to choose the song that's playing from the remote machine[...]".
You CAN'T pick anything from the remote machine in a VLC streaming session - you get to look/listen to what's served.

What this guy is looking for is some form of file sharing rather than media streaming.

Re:Check out VLC....

[(H)elix1]

Yes, but this is only for one or two clients. I set up a video server for my little one's movies after she mangled the third copy of a bug's life. She sees a list of movies icons, clicks one, fires up a server instance on the backend, and repeatedly streams the movie until she selects another or hits a time interval. It is fast enough for movies, so tiny sound files should be a breeze. The client bit comes with a nice API that lets you do a fair bit of manipulation.

Re:Check out VLC....

[sploo22]

You CAN'T pick anything from the remote machine in a VLC streaming session - you get to look/listen to what's served.

As a matter of fact you can - it has an HTTP remote control interface, at port 8080 by default. See http://videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/ch04.html#id 2533499 [videolan.org]

peercast.org

[NZheretic]

PeerCast.org [peercast.org] is one solution. You can set it up on one PC letting only clients on the local network connect.

iTunes

[2nd Post!]

This is the feature you're looking for, right?

Streaming across a LAN, free, media jukebox, runs on Windows.

Re:iTunes

[2nd Post!]

Oops, I didn't see the follow up on the Solaris lab machines!

just for clarification

[croddy]

wait ... lemme get this straight ... the server's gonna run windows, and the clients are gonna run solaris?

Re:Weird Arbitrary Requirements

[mindstormpt]

Usually when someone says they're looking for something free they aren't looking to buy "an old Pentium II"

Re:Weird Arbitrary Requirements

[danielrose]

When you understand that ask slashdot very rarely has interesting questions, then you will know why this one is not interesting.

A friend of mine does it this way...

[eno2001]

He did what all real men do and wrote a web interface in PHP that allows him to list out all of his music on a web page. He can select individual tracks, entire albums or a collection of albums by an artist and then generate a *.m3u file that gets sent to the client and with proper file association, launches the proper media player. The playlist just contains http URLs in it that point to what he chose. Since bandwidth restrictions aren't a part of what this kid is asking for, that should be fine. Oh ye

GNUMP3d?

[stevey]

GNUMP3d [gnump3d.org] is a perl based streaming server which allows you to share a music/video/multimedia archive across a LAN.

Whilst it's designed on Linux machines and only sporadically tested under Windows it should do the job you want - point it at a directory with your media files in it, then fire up a browser to choose your songs / stream away.

Failing that Andromedia [turnstyle.com] should do a good job if you have PHP on your Windows version of Apache. Their personal edition is cheap, and I think there's a free version somebo

Re:GNUMP3d?

[ziekke]

Thanks for the link to Andromeda. I've been looking for something similar to the OP, and short of writing it myself I haven't been able to find anything. I gave the evaluation a shot and it works perfectly.

Aside from the $35 price tag (which almost anyone should be able to afford), this software should be exactly what he is looking for.

Andromeda also has an ASP copy in case you don't want to have PHP.

Unless I can find something within a short period of time, I'll probably be getting myself a personal lic

Re:GNUMP3d?

[darkgumby]

If you think that Andromeda is a good solution then you may want to look into Zina.
It's similar to Andromeda but free and PHP only.
http://pancake.org/zina/index.html

Re:GNUMP3d?

[stevey]

I was hoping to advertise the first one more - cos that's the one I wrote ;)

I just added the Andromedia link to be more balanced and because it seems like a nice piece of software too!

Some web based streams

[Sithgunner]

Try RadioToolBox [radiotoolbox.com] for php based or mod_mp3 [tangent.org] for apache module based.

Or if you can write some php code, it's not so hard to write one up yourself.

Just list the files in a music directory and create playlist(pls or m3u [winamp.com]) upon click.

Re:Some web based streams

[WebCrapper]

My parents required the same thing as the story parent and all I did was setup apache on a box they hardly ever touch, setup apache to startup and a PHP script to read a directory. Free, runs on windows, you can put in security if you want - I could go on, but we all know what you can do with it.

netjuke

[supersuckers]

I've been using netjuke for over a year, it streams mp3's and other audio files. I think video might be in it's future. Check it out http://www.netjuke.org/ [netjuke.org]. I use it under linux, but works just as easily under windows.

Been doing it myself for years

[jorenko]

Winamp and shoutcast. There's even plugins for winamp out there that give you a huge amount of control via a web interface. You'll need a windows client running winamp to receive nullsoft streaming video, but any mp3 player can pick up a shoutcast stream.

I suppose the only downside to this is that if you ever DO end up with multiple people using it at the same time, they can only watch/listen to the same thing. Though maybe you'd become something of a college net-radio operator, who knows?

SlimServer

[MadChicken]

http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html [slimdevices.com]

I've only used it on Mac, but it works very well. You can select media from a web interface.

free beer wanted!!

[middlemen]

and it should be free (as in beer, I'm a student).

Hell !! i am a student and I dont ask for free beer.. maybe i shud start doing that!!

RealNetworks

[jackbower]

Free to limited clients (maybe 25 concurrrent)

Edna

[kupojsin]

your problem mirrors what i wanted to do exactly one month ago. i got a lot of replies but nothing useful. then a random email came my way suggesting edna a small python script that can be run in linux or windows. it creates a small html web interface that passes m3u playlists so that your player does the requesting. its robust easy to set up and works great. Ive had friends from israel and japan stream my music on a cable modem no problem. the website is http://edna.sourceforge.net/

The simple solution

[dtfinch]

Apache (an most other http servers) can serve it all without any work on your part besides making your media directory the root and enabling directory browsing.

Is the content on this media server going to stuff you own or have permission to distribute?

Re:The simple solution

[node 3]

Is the content on this media server going to stuff you own or have permission to distribute?

Would that affect Apache's ability to serve the files?

Darwin Streaming Server

[Ster]

You could try Darwin Streaming Server, the open source (Apple Public Source License) version of the QuickTime Streaming Server that is included with Mac OS X Server.

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/streami ng/ [apple.com]

My understanding is that it can stream MPEG files, and also pretty much anything that QuickTime can play.

Hope that helps.

-Ster

xp rdp

[man_ls]

Windows XP Remote Desktop.

Assuming the host is a Pro machine, it's simple.

Connect to the machine using the latest version of the MS-RDP client (the one from Windows XP, mstsc.exe)

You have an option to "bring sound to this system", "leave sound at remote system" or "do not play sound"

just bring it to your system. It's recompressed somehow, I think to 128 kbps, but its decent for most listening.

QoS

[Bazman]

"Anywhere on campus, I can expect to get a minimum of 10 megabits/s between my current machine and the PVR"

That'll be until every other student is doing this (unless your net techs have given you the bandwidth and some QoS guarantee)...

WinAmp's shoutCAST

[Iam8up]

www.shoutcast.com excellent radio software, the "DJ" can be local or global

Beyond simple

[Solder Fumes]

Seriously, this is a non-question. Not only does Google turn up hundreds of straightforward options, but in 1999 I was streaming MP3s off a 486 SX-33 running Linux and Apache on a 13-gig drive, using nothing more complicated than saving a Winamp playlist and using Notepad's find-replace to convert each entry into a URL. From that point it's like the files are sitting on your own hard drive.

Iceflow

[thebabelfish]

Recently I wrote a slick web front-end (Iceflow) to a queuing system for IceS [icecast.org], an audio source client for the Icecast [icecast.org] streaming music server. I haven't packaged up the code and released it yet -- I've been meaning to -- but if you email me (find my address on my website [zulutango.org]), I'll tell you more about it and send the code your way.

It only deals with music, but Icecast apparently supports video streaming now, so with some changes it could support video too, I imagine.

little old asp page

[wcb4]

I wrote a little ole asp page that will allow you to flip through your directory structure, if there are no media files, it assumes it is part of the directory structure adn slows links to lall subfolders (if those folders cotnain folder.jpg, then it shows the thumbnail) this keeps going until you get down to the media folders themselves. If you have a folder.jpg there, it also shows the folder thumbnail (album art) and gives you links to all the media files in that directory (media files are defined as hav

Re:little old asp page

[wcb4]

I posted the code to my journal
unless slashcode broke it entirely, it should work.. three things to configure at top of script. Otherwise, it works as advertised

http://slashdot.org/~wcb4/journal/99468

couple of things to note... since windows xp uses folder.jpg to create thumbnails for folders and uses it as album art for playing mp3, the code looks to see if that file exists and uses it for thumbnails....

If you put a file called folder.nfo or allmusic.txt (reviews or other info) in a folder, it will appe

Jinzora?

[Milhouse_ph]

I was using Jinzora for a while and it's a pretty slick little php app that does pretty much what you are looking for:

http://www.jinzora.org/ [jinzora.org]

For musuc

[haplo21112]

Use Winamp with the shout plugin...
A shoutcast server
and wwwinamp from halo 8....

MP3Beamer

[tommyth]

Just blow $400 on the MP3Beamer!