I really don’t like our solution, though, it does work. We use the Cisco IP/TV system, which can distribute content in windows media player, quick time, or its own format (with a freely available plugin).

Which format you go with, depends on what your target audience is. Windows Media Player version 9, is windows only. Quicktime is windows/mac. Real player is windows, mac, unix but has tons of ad ware and other bothersome things.

If you go the streaming route, I would prolly stream it and let people connect with winamp, xmms, zinf, etc … Its very cross platform (even beos people could listen ), and it uses tools that most people already have and are very familar with using.

If you offer downloads, I would go with a 192k mp3. I greatly prefer Ogg Vorbis over MP3, but MP3 is the defacto standard. So, unless you wanted to put the open Ogg over MP3, mp3 is prolly the better choice. 192k VBR mp3 is a high enough quality that most people would be very happy with. (if you went ogg vorbis, you could even drop it to 128 for about the same quality and save on bandwidth costs)

How important is content control? is the content actually going to change?

As a consumer, I would rather have the straight download. I may want to go back and review something, etc … and being that this is non-profit asking people to pay again might be iffy. But, you need to cover costs. Downloading also offers the benefit of being able to throw it on a portable player and listening on the go.

99cents a download seems fair. it’ll nickel and dime ya to death if you let it. but, its a good price for a audio clip.

Altp.

Before you go any further, how large is your expected audience?
Before you can decide on hosting you need to know how much bandwidth you will use, and if there will be peak times.

e.g. We stream our live feed thru a service provider. We use their massive pipe during the live services, since the church T1 couldn’t handle it. We use the T1 for streaming archived services since they will be accessed sporadiclly.

I highly recommend mp3 for streaming and for solid downloads. I honestly see no reason to use anything other than mp3 and its child/brother projects (e.g. ogg) for audio. Name one fault/drawback of mp3 streaming!
Open, standard, easily accessible, heavily used ( http://www.shoutcast.com ) and I could listen to the sermon from my linux or bsd console. Okay, I guess the console thing might not make the list.

Yeah you read that right, the church has a T1.

my 2cents
–
sean

Mike, I hadn’t considered the cross-platform accessibility issues–thank you for pointing them out. MP3 would, in this case, seem to be the most accessible technology because anyone with any sort of player on any platform could listen–including Windows Media, RealPlayer, or QuickTime. Sean pointed out Shoutcast–does MP3 streaming require special hard/software, or do I have a choice of platforms here?

As far as encoding quality, we’ll probably be doing 32Kbps. This is voice-only (with some short bumper music, perhaps), so we only need the mid-range frequencies to sound good. 32Kbps sounds pretty good, for example, in this broadcast: http://www.theooze.com/msoc/audio/Spencer_Burke.mp3

I’m having a hard time trying to determine how or why content control is important. Thinking like a content provider, don’t want people ripping off my stuff and claiming that it’s theirs. On the other hand, thinking like a church, I want people to be able to share freely because the content is more important than my ability to be attributed for it. That really comes down to a decision by the elders (people who run the church) as to what they want to do, but having clear-cut thoughts about the topic helps.

I’m guessing at the 99¢ number. A subscription per year sounds like a much more predictable way to manage costs than a per-download model. On the other hand, though, there may be the person that just wants only one sermon and that’s it, and, well, 99¢ seems to be work pretty well for Apple: http://www.applemusic.com

Sean, thanks for bringing up the high/low bandwidth question. In our conversations, the only benefit of Real streaming vs. MP3 download is that streaming downsizes dynamically for, say, a 56KBps modem. Can MP3 streaming do that, too?

Expected audience: not more than 100 users at this point. Though scalability is an important, forward-thinking question. You figure that, for starters, ~5MB downloads per 100 users, ~4.5 times a month. That’s just over two Gig per month: http://www.google.com/search?q=4.5+*+100+*+5%20MB Right now, I personally have about 2GB/month transfer for ~$100 a year, but that doesn’t include any sort of streaming (that I know of), and it definitely doesn’t include secure logins.

By the way, Sean, I think you’re the only person I’ve heard of that uses the command line for listening to music–that’s pretty hardcore.

Before you research anymore, make sure you research ondemand streaming. It works differently (though not much different) than live (radio) streaming.

###does MP3 streaming require special hard/software, or do I have a choice of platforms here?###
There are dozens of mp3 streamer packages, and a handful for every platform (unix/win32/etc).

mod_mp3 http://media.tangent.org/ supports ondemand streaming, so do shoutcast and icecast (and probably any other *cast).

With a streaming server, the server pushes it out. That requires some service to be running, therefore you will probably need a specialized host.

The other option with mp3′s is just to use an m3u file. Try this out:
* Upload some mp3 to your site.
* Create a new plaintext file with the url to that mp3 as the only text.
* save that file on your site with the m3u extension.

Then go to the m3u url via your browser, and I bet your mp3 player will magically open and start playing the mp3. With this route the client is doing the streaming, and 99% (or more) of decoders will work with it. Also that means for each new sermon you only need those 2 files. Just link directly to the mp3 for them to download, and m3u to stream. Now since the m3u is just a plaintext stream playlist (you can even include multiple files in it), your level of content control is very low.

If after researching you find that the latter option works great, then the only hardware you need is the equipment to get his sermon onto the computer. And of course a hosting service, but you won’t need any special streaming services.

This is going to be a long comments log. 0245am, time to sleep.

I”ve actually found that a combination of the 2, console+gui seems to be optimal.

I use xmms to play my music. To control xmms i use the terminal app xmmsctrl, and the plugin xmmsfind_remote.

xmmsctrl allows me to control ust about all the xmms functions from a terminal, which i have mapped to keybindings in my window manager. Xmmsfind_remote allows you to quickly search youe playlist. so i can hit ctrl+alt+j to bring up the fund window and then type “voo chi” and voodoo chile” is displayed. hit enter and it plays.

that way, no matter where i am, which virtual desktop i am on, or even which computer in the house i am on (ssh into my desktop), i can have complete control over my music (i just adjusted the volume of my music without loosing focus on this textarea field … i love it ).

ANYway. back on topic.

I also remembered the helix project https://helix-server.helixcommunity.org/ this morning.

Bandwidth is very expensive, if you are trying to get your own pipe to your house or something. Last time i checked, around here, it was 1000$ a month for a T1 to a residence from a high-quality provider. Choosing a dedicated solution from someone that already has the bandwidth in place will save you a lot of money. As you prolly already know, i am a huge fan of rackspace

Chances are, you get everything that you will want, plus the expandability, you will want a dedicated or shared solution, where you have some shell access to the box.

Altp.

Bit torrent spreads the bandwidth costs to the downloader, greatly cutting yours down to the point that they may just be managable, or within default hosting costs.

I agree with altp in re to hosting. No need to host yourself. The church does host archiving but only b/c we will actually save money. We may eventually move that to a hosting service also, if the demand grows.

This thread has motivated me to attempt to get our ra (real audio) archives converted to mp3 (or duplicated). It would be nice to have some sermons sitting with all my songs.

A 32kbs sermon (depending on length) would be a very large download for a user on dialup.

Say that didn’t matter. I love bittorrent, but is there an easy way for a novice to use bittorrent (this is a sermon, not a tech feed.)? Also, bittorrent depends on seeds (other users). This will not be a highly seeded download. Unless kenn finds some nice people that want to donate their bandwidth and keep the seeds alive. I personally would if our church added that alternate route.

True that size matters – but the audio will be downloaded one way or another – why not hit it all at once instead of streaming. Listen now, or listen later. Doesn’t really matter, imho. But then again, streaming doesn’t make it feel like downloading, so they psychology is different.

Bittorrent depends on seeds, to an extent. If it’s just 1 to 1, it would just be like a normal download from the server.. but when 2 people hit it, the load gets distributed, and so on and so forth. Thus it gets better with more people, but can work alone too – assuming the goal is to minimize server impact.

As far as setting it up… yeah, it’s not that hard. It could be reduced to just “save as mp3, run a script” – the script would create a bit torrent tracker file, put it online via scp, and update the link or what not. It would be pretty simple. The creation of a tracker file is just done via a simple app that’s included with bit torrent.

Anyway, It all depends on your goals for the project – If awesome convenience is your goal, stream away… but prepare for the bill. If server load reduction is what you want, and just general availability, go with the torrent.

I’m not sure if you saw this http://audio.ciara.us/test/64test/results.html but it was posted on /. listing comparisons of 64k codecs. I know that’s a bit high for your uses. Also, (this is a question for Jai), with your rack mount server @ NAC, how much data transfer are you allowed per month?
Is it umlimited?

Darin