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Author Topic: [TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast  (Read 11412 times)

Offline soveryshiny

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[TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast
« on: January 18, 2007, 02:22:46 AM »
Sort of meant to write this up months ago, never got around to it until now.  Just a helpful guide for the other JPH!P DJs out there, explaining how to setup your show to run automatically.  As long as you remember to prep the files then there's no chance of accidently forgetting to do the show.  And if you do forget then it'll be a rerun ^^;

Tools:
foobar2000 - used for show prep and encoding frontend
lame (grab the 3.97 release bundle, not the 3.98 aplhpa) - does the actual encoding.
ezstream (grab the ezstream_win32_0.2.1_setup.exe file linked at the top) - does the streaming for you, instead of Winamp (or whatever you may have been using before)

Note: the next steps are how I prep all the files for broadcasting.  It doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you end up with 128kbps, 44.1khz mp3 files.  If you prefer to do it some other way go right ahead.

--- skipable if you can handle all the file prep by yourself ---

Install foobar2000, making sure to install the converter component under option components->tools.  Unzip the lame.exe file into the foobar2000 folder as well.  Go into foobar2000's preferences (file->preferences or press ctrl-P) and look under tools->converter.  Under encoding presets click add new.  First create one choosing FLAC for the encoder, compression level 0 (need some intermediate files).  Then create one using custom for the encoder.  Select the lame.exe for the encoder line, mp3 for the extension, "-S --noreplaygain --preset cbr 128 --priority 0 - %d" for the parameters without the quotes around it, lossy for the format, 24 for the highest BPS, and give it a name you'll remember.  You'll also want to set a naming pattern for the output files.  I use Radio\%list_index% for the temporary ones so it puts them in a directory called Radio, and %tracknumber% for the second ones so the final files are named the same as their tracknumber.

In foobar2000, create a new playlist for your show.  Add all the songs (and other files if you recorded intro or talk segments) to it.  Be sure to arrange them in the correct order.  Select all, right click->convert->convert to...  Pick the flac level 0 profile, hit OK, and then pick the directory to convert to.  It'll run for a bit and give you flac files of your show.  Add them into another playlist, select all, right click->replaygain->scan selection as single album.  Do any clean up of the tags that you need to do.  I usually renumber all the tracknumbers to the order I have them (select all->right click->file info->right click->auto tracknumber) and romanize the artist and track info since the radio has problems with non-ascii.  Select all->convert->convert to same directory->enable replaygain processing (apply album gain, prevent clipping according to album peak)->more settings->change the naming pattern to the one with just the tracknumber->close the settings box->change the encoding preset to the 128kbps mp3 one you created->hit OK.  When it's done converting, you'll have a bunch of 128kbps mp3 files, ready to be streamed.  Remove the flac files from your playlist (you can delete them now too) and add the mp3 files.  Select all->right click->tagging->mp3 tag types->make sure only id3v1 is checked, nothing else.  Then select all->right click->utils->save as playlist.  Save the playlist somewhere with an easy path, I recommend saving it in the same directory that you install the other program, EZstream, into.  Make sure to change the playlist type to m3u, it defaults to something else.  I use playlist.m3u and the instructions for setting up EZstream below will too.

--- end skipable part ---

Install EZstream, this guide will assume it's in c:\program files\ezstream.  If you put it somewhere else you might have to fix the path a few times.  You'll need an m3u file with the paths to the files for your show.  If you follow the file prep guide above then you'll have one called playlist.m3u.  You'll need to create a control xml file for ezstream.  Mine looks like this, you can copy and paste it into your own one without many changes:
<ezstream>
    <url>http://radio.jphip.com:7188/jphip</url>
    <sourcepassword>TYPE REAL PASSWORD HERE</sourcepassword>
    <format>MP3</format>
    <filename>playlist.m3u</filename>
    <svrinfoname>JP HiP Radio</svrinfoname>   
    <svrinfourl>http://jphip.com</svrinfourl>
    <svrinfogenre>JPop</svrinfogenre>
    <svrinfodescription>Bliss</svrinfodescription>
    <svrinfobitrate>128</svrinfobitrate>   
    <svrinfochannels>2</svrinfochannels>
    <svrinfosamplerate>44100</svrinfosamplerate>
    <svrinfopublic>1</svrinfopublic>   
</ezstream>

If your playlist file is named something else, change it from playlist.m3u.  Also, put in the real server password.  Save as ezstream_mp3.xml in the ezstream directory.  Now create another text file with just this in it, minus the quotes: "ezstream.exe -c ezstream_mp3.xml"  Save it as show.cmd.  Now click on start->programs->accessories->system tools->scheduled tasks.  Click add scheduled task.  Click next on the first window.  It'll probably sit for a while as it scans your computer for registered programs to present you a list.  Ignore the list, click browse, and select the show.cmd file you created in the ezstream directory.  Give the task a name, and check "weekly" for when to perform it.  Select the start time and check the day(s) that your show is on, hit next.  Type in your Windows username and password, hit next.  Click the "Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish." box and then hit Finish.  Go to the settings tab, check the "stop the task if it runs for:" box and set the time to the length of your show.  EZstream will autoloop your show if you don't.  If you show varies in length you'll have to change this value to how long it is each episode.  I try to keep mine to within 5-10 second over the length it's supposed to be and make sure it's just silence at the end of a track that gets cut off.  You don't really want the show to end before the time limit you set as it'll start replaying the beginning of your show for a little bit until it hits the time limit you set there.  Then hit OK.  Everything should be ready to go and your show should be broadcast automatically the next time you scheduled it for.

Feel free to post any setup questions or other comments here, I'll try to help as much as I can.  I was going to include screenshots, but laziness intervened.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2008, 08:08:20 AM by daigong »

Offline Terence Hideyoshi

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Re: [TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2008, 12:51:21 AM »
Regarding the following: ezstream (grab the ezstream_win32_0.2.1_setup.exe file linked at the top)

I couldn't find this link file. Hence, can this (ezstream-0.5.3-win32.zip) be used instead?

Offline soveryshiny

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Re: [TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2008, 01:18:02 AM »
Sorry, this is out of date.  The bad news is, since the stream was switched to shoutcast with the relaunch, ezstream doesn't work.  I was unable to find any good Windows replacements.  I eventually switched to using ices on a linux server, and had to hack it slightly to not auto-loop.

With Windows and ezstream, I did make a feature request to add shoutcast support.  Amusingly enough it was just reopened last week, since, while they originally said no, apparently it is quite doable.  Would require you to compile it from source yourself though, which is pretty unlikely to happen for most Windows users.  https://trac.xiph.org/ticket/1292#comment:5 is the ticket for it on their server if you want to follow it in case they do add it in sometime soon.

Offline Terence Hideyoshi

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Re: [TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2008, 04:02:41 AM »
icic... To be frank, I'm a IT idiot, hence would like to keep things simple and easy to manage. Hence, I think I shall wait for a kind soul who is able to get all the necessary steps ready. =)

btw, I do remember that the old winamp is capable to stream musics. Is the current version capable is doing that?

Offline soveryshiny

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Re: [TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2008, 02:13:02 PM »
Winamp and Foobar can both stream live.  That's how most people do it.  This guide was intended for people that wanted to pre-record everything and have it broadcast automatically.

Offline Terence Hideyoshi

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Re: [TUTORIAL] Guide to automating your radio show broadcast
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2008, 07:35:02 AM »
Winamp and Foobar can both stream live.  That's how most people do it.  This guide was intended for people that wanted to pre-record everything and have it broadcast automatically.

Sorry for this very very late reply. Mind to teach me how to broadcast thru winamp.

JPHiP Radio (16/200 @ 128 kbs)     Now playing: WINK - REAL Na Yume No Jouken