Liquidsoap Transcoder Relays

[westjgames]

Alright. I previously posted on how to use Radiobot as a transcoder relay, but I found a much more efficient method that uses a different program: LiquidSoap.

You can grab it from here: http://savonet.sourceforge.net/

It's probably the best toolkit you can have for streaming, and it's capabilities far outstrip that of just being a relay, but you can discover those uses for yourself.

Alrighty, lets get started.

On DEBIAN-BASED systems:

Ubuntu allows you to install using aptitude:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install liquidsoap

This should install all that you need. Some codecs, such as AAC+, may need further installation steps (see here: http://savonet.sourceforge.net/doc-svn/ ... rmats.html)

For RHEL/FEDORA and others:

You're going to need to build the software and codecs from source. See this for more information: http://savonet.sourceforge.net/download.html

Alrighty, now that we're installed, lets get started.

Setting up the script:

We need to have the script file put in the install folder of Liquidsoap. This is usually either /etc/liquidsoap, /etc/init.d/liquidsoap or /var/log/liquidsoap. In your terminal, change to that directory, and type the following:

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touch transcoder.liq
nano transcoder.liq

Now that we have nano open, type the following:

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url = "<SOURCE STREAM>"
input = mksafe(input.http(url))

output.shoutcast(
  %aacplus(channels=2, bitrate=<BITRATE>),
  host="<DESTIP>", port=<DESTPORT>, password="<PASSWORD>",
  input)

where <SOURCE STREAM> is your existing shoutcast server you want to relay, <BITRATE> is the desired transcoded bitrate, <DESTPORT> is the port of the destination Shoutcast server, <DESTIP is the destination IP and <PASSWORD> is the destination server password.

This will relay in AAC+ audio, which is a lot better than MP3 for low bandwidth. Good bitrates to use here are 96, 64 and 32.

Now, save the file, and quit to the terminal. You can now run the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/liquidsoap start

Now you have a running relay up! This will run in daemon mode as a background application. If you aren't comfortable with editing files outside of home, you can place the file elsewhere (i.e /home/user/) and use the following command:

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liquidsoap -d /path/to/filename.liq

The program will run in daemon mode from the script you specified.

There you have it, a working transcoder!