[SOLVED] Radio station streaming issue

alderfall · 02-18-2022, 12:13 PM

Hello folks! New user to this forum. I did search through past posts for about 10 minutes and I did not see anything like what I am about to ask, thank you for your help in advance.

This might be long in order facilitate the most information for you.

At the heart of the matter is a simple problem: I am trying to stream an internet radio station and it is dying from time to time and I do not want it to do that.

To understand my situation best, let me explain that my wife and I own a rural farm on the Oregon coast. I am away from the house for many hours at a time. I have, for about 8 years now, been running an internet based radio station stream through a laptop (a 2007 Intel MacBook, in fact) to a FM transmitter and I then take a radio around the farm or use the radios in various pieces of equipment here to listen all day.

All was well until February 1st of this year when the internet radio station switched their stream to Live365. Since that time, Live365 drops my audio stream at random, but usually no more often than every couple or few hours. It does this no matter if I am using the original MacBook or another device, such as my iPad. And, since it did not happen prior to the switch to Live365, I blame Live365. Upon contacting the radio station owner itself, they confirmed my findings, it is not simply affecting only me.

I am running Q4OS (Debian) on the MacBook. I love it, no problems there. I am using 4.7 Gemini with Plasma, by the way. I usually try to run the stream through VLC but have tried multiple apps and a few distros on another laptop (LXLE, Linux Mint, Lubuntu, Ubuntu).

Here is what I really need:

A means by which to play the stream and command it to stop and restart the stream, maybe every 2 hours. I cannot find anyway to get VLC to do this and am wondering if there is another option out there to get this to happen. I also cannot get VLC to simply restart the stream once it dies. I want to keep the stream alive, so I don't have to be without music until I can get back to the house.

On my old Mac OS X install (Snow Leopard on the old MacBook), I would've created an automated music click series and then set a schedule for it to occur every couple or few hours. That doesn't seem to exist for Linux (at least I can't find it). XClicker doesn't seem to allow me to do more than one click and I need it to do at least two:

1) Stop the stream
2) Start the stream

I don't mind using a command line kind of media player, if it can be scripted to allow a stop, play on a schedule, say every 120-180 minutes.

So, there you have it - in a nutshell. Hahaha... I tried to spare you some more verbosity but can provide further details if you would like me to do that.

I guess I will throw in the contents of the listen.m3u file in case you care:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:0,AFFIRM SOUTHERN GOSPEL RADIO
https://streaming.live365.com/a38333
#EXTINF:1,AFFIRM SOUTHERN GOSPEL RADIO
https://streaming.live365.com/a38333

Thanks again for going through this long post and sticking with me. I am open to doing many different things to get this to function correctly, so I am open to any and or all suggestions.

Have a great day where you are...

Rand

rokytnji · 02-20-2022, 04:56 PM

I use .pls instead of .m3u files in small player like qmmp .

Your links play just fine in my browser. Not sure my self you are just experiencing internet provider woes.

Either dropping out on your end or the radio station end.

Something that outside your control.

Not sure either if this thread will help.

https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=148523

Quote:

Restart Radiotray. (from https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1182084 at the bottom by dino99) Doing this eliminated most of the drops; for the others Radiotray now restarts the stream by itself.

Good Luck.

ondoho · 02-21-2022, 04:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alderfall

I blame Live365.

Correct.
I have had that experience too and I'm sure they're doing it on purpose.

First of all you might want to check if the station doesn't also stream their music directly.

Quote:

A means by which to play the stream and command it to stop and restart the stream, maybe every 2 hours.

I am pretty sure this is easily achievable; assuming the media player exits when the stream cuts out:

Code:

url="$1"
while :; do
    mpv "$url"
    sleep 1
done

If mpv doesn't do that by default, I'm sure it has an option to do so.

michaelk · 02-21-2022, 09:19 AM

If whatever you use to stream doesn't automatically quit you should be able to setup a cron job to kill it and restart.

teckk · 02-21-2022, 11:03 AM

My 2 cents. The stream url is at:

Code:

https://ais-edge51-live365-dal02.cdnstream.com/a38333

Code:

ffprobe https://ais-edge51-live365-dal02.cdnstream.com/a38333
...
    StreamTitle     : STEELES - FAITHFUL ONCE AGAIN (2021)
    StreamUrl       : 
  Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 160 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s

So its a 160 kb/s mp3 stream.

Quote:

I don't mind using a command line kind of media player, if it can be scripted to allow a stop, play on a schedule, say every 120-180 minutes.

You want the stream to stop/restart every x? That's easy enough.

Reset every 20 seconds example:

Code:

while :; do
    mpv "https://ais-edge51-live365-dal02.cdnstream.com/a38333" &
    str_pid=$!
    sleep 20
    kill "$str_pid"
done

Or do you want something else?

mount.nfs · 02-21-2022, 02:09 PM

http://archive.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/ffmpeg

dpkg-deb -x ffmpegXYZ.deb .
sudo cp /usr/lib/i386/libva.so.2.0.100 /usr/lib/libva.so.1

./ffmpeg -ss 63 -i input.type -aframes nnnn output.type
at 63seconds and take nnnn audio frames

Mike_Walsh · 02-22-2022, 06:46 AM

My experience is similar to Rocky's.

I've had an a/c with RadioTunes for quite a few years. One advantage of a paid account is you get the option to patch it out through your favourite media player via a .pls stream.

For this I use DeaDBeeF.

I've never, to the best of my knowledge, used an .m3u stream.....but RadioTunes' .pls stream is dead stable, and will play all day long if I want it to. Never a drop-out; well, very occasionally it will, but it's extremely rare, and is more than likely due to network glitches.

Mike.

alderfall · 02-22-2022, 06:51 AM

WOW!

Hey, listen guys, this is all a real treat for me. I am shocked to see this in here and I am ever thankful, surely. I was away over the weekend and came back this morning to see all of this! THANK YOU.

Now, I will need to try to implement any/all of it, so I can't be sure of which direction I will be taking, but I will try to get to it tomorrow (Wednesday) and then report back.

Thus far, you guys are really giving me some good hope here. I will churn this over a little and when I have more time, start giving it all a whirl.

Again, you are all very kind to this legacy DOS guy, just trying to do something that seems so natural in his mind. Hahahaha...

Have a great day, more to come and thanks again!

Rand

alderfall · 02-24-2022, 08:51 AM

Okay all, my issue has been RESOLVED. And I have all of you to thank for it.

I have been streaming for over 24 hours without a total stream failure as of yet. I cannot be sure it is going to last for the weeks I have been accustomed to but it is far better than losing the stream 6-8 times a day, surely!

So, here is what I did, I took a very low tech approach.

First, I went into the Q4OS software center and installed GoodVibes. I then opened it, added my Affirm stream URL and set GoodVibes to repeat. I then walked away. And, since then, it has been working as I could hope. I do hear occasional drops or stutters, but big deal. After a few seconds all is right again. Once I lost the stream intermittently for about 15 minutes, with GoodVibes reconnecting at least 15 times in that span, but eventually all went back to right. It is, in essence, automatic and fully functional.

Such a simple solution and has taught me a big lesson. See, I struggled with this problem for weeks. And, I tried various distros (remember, this is a 2007 MacBook running this OS and output to the FM transmitter) since I kept having trouble with them all. When I was using Mac OS X and the original stream link (not the Live365 server), I was able to use VLC without any trouble. I assumed that would be the same, regardless of the setup, OS, etc. And, I really spent many hours switching between installs and setups, trying various other media players without success either. The big lesson was this... I shouldn't have waited so long to ask for help!

Thanks to you all, your assistance was valuable and really appreciated.

I'll keep an eye on this thread for a few days in case anyone has any questions.

Have a great day everyone...

Rand