How to combine automatic shuffled tracks with automated live streams
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Daaa SaaDaaa Saa
    Posts: 1Member

     Hi,

    After months of delay, fiddling getting enraged, taking a break, fiddling, changing server, trying new settings, forgetting, getting enraged, please can someone tell me if this is even possible:


    Im a competent linux sysadmin and skilled web developer, work a lot with Apache, configs etc.

    I have an Ubuntu server in my office (this has over 100mbit/s connection) which holds all of the Library MP3s and runs Airtime, this is accessible via the internet, DJs connect directly to Airtime in my office with Butt. The outward stream then goes to a VPS with unlimited bandwidth which relays the stream out to iPhone / web apps.

    I have simplified the examples below for ease of understanding.


    OVERALL OBJECTIVE:


    24-7 music streaming house and drum and bass mixes (30min in length), 

    DJs and venues have scheduled recurring live shows for an hour a week and connect from around the country.

    venues need hardware running 24-7 which starts streaming automatically at their specified show time because none of their staff can do it

    Djs might not be available to stream their live shows. music should continue playing regardless. 

    When Djs and venues connect it overrides the scheduled play.

    when there is not scheduled play then play random music of a particular genre from the library depending on the time. 

    DJs can upload their prerecorded mixes and schedule that for their shows if they will not be available to do it live, or can upload to the library to be slotted in when there is no live stream active.


    GOAL / Specific problem 1) 

    Play ANYTHING randomly if there is no scheduled play, live show source, or Master source. Anything other than silence.


    - This doesnt seem to be possible, even after editing liquidsoap config files, or whatever hack it was i found on a forum and tried


    GOAL / specific problem 2)

    Scheduled Play: I want to Play House music mixes randomly from the files in the library tagged with genre "house" from 10am - 10pm and "drum and bass" the rest of the time. I dont want to have to hand pick music. Music which is uploaded by DJs should automatically get played when randomly shuffling through tracks in non live stream time.


    Tried: 

    1) Upload music to library and, tag it with a Genre field in metadata

    2) Create a Dynamic 1h smartblock filtering by Genre Metadata field

    3) Create a 1h playlist, add the smartblock created in the previous step as the content 

    4) Create a Repeating show for house between 10am and 10pm, create a recurring show for "drum and bass" the rest of the time . Both with "link" to repeat the audio content forever

    5) Add the playlist created in step 3 to the repeating show.


    - The shows tracks were not picking from the library at "random" when the show started streaming, instead a playlist was generated when the calendar was viewed, so by viewing a few months ahead, all of the playlists were generated and fixed at that point.

    - when new files were added by DJs to the library the whole preset smart playlist blocks etc all had to be deleted and dragged in again to refresh the scheduled content, so much hassle

    - the above solution took hours of fiddling, blog and forum reading to work out and is time consuming, difficult and requires constant time and attention and redoing, if this isnt done every few months the stream goes quiet. so isn’t a solution

    - if there was say 3x 30min mixes in an hour long slot, the mixes would be abruptly cut by Airtime part way though and switch to the next mix in the middle of the show. this could be related to the combined playtime of the MP3 being longer than the show time? i dont know.


    GOAL 3) 

    Remote connection From DJs and Clubs

    I want to automatically switch from automated play to sources which are already online and waiting to go live.


    tried:


    1. Create a user who is a DJ
    2.  Using the Show Source system > Create a repeating show with a Live Stream Input using Airtime Auth and user created in step 1


    • Show Sources cannot connect to icecast when the Show is in the future - which means i can’t auto switch to a live source for clubs as the stream needs to be started manually at the club end 1 second after the start time.
    • Cant use the smart block method from Goal 2 and have an overlapping Show Source in the calendar. which means no Scheduled Play by Genre fallback, which means silence if the DJ / Club does not connect
    3. Master Source method to override scheduled play with DJs connecting manually 


      • this is a security risk
      • couldn’t find an inexpensive hardware / software solution that would automatically connect at a specific time from a club. 


      Possible option 4 - hypothesis and not tested

      • Have the venues each stream to their own mount on the VPS constantly. 
      • Add a Web Stream at the start of a show which connects to a venue stream mount on the VPS. 
      • Airtime can then take the specified stream when the show starts and return it to the VPS Airtime mount.
      • what happens if the stream is not active? does the show go silent? 
      • Do i put playlists and web streams into the same show with the web stream first. so if the web stream is offline the playlist will play?
      • what happens if the stream comes online late, does it interrupt the currently playing Playlist or get skipped?
      • doesn’t fix the problem of shows not being shuffled.


      To be honest im tired of wasting my valuable and limited spare time trying hack workarounds to get something to work as i hoped it would.

      Persevering with Airtime has drained my enthusiasm for what was supposed to be a fun project and turned it into something of a burden and has cost me nearly a year of delay.

      This is a last ditch attempt, if anyone out there can help me achieve my goals, please help me config Airtime and explain how to use it in this way, or if its not possible i will move on to something else.  it has potential to be great and could be exactly what i need to run my station, but the points above make it unusable.

      $100 USD REWARD if you can figure this one out.


    1. 4 Comments sorted by
    2. Vote Up0Vote Down Voisses TechVoisses Tech
      Posts: 1,423Member
      $100 USD REWARD if you can figure this one out.

      WOW       Would buy me a nice pair of winter boots ,except that we are having a good winter with just chills and snow flakes,but maybe you could use it to buy the lowest Airtime pro plan and just put the server(like shoutcast) on the VPS and relay it.

      I am not offending you but honestly based on what you describe seems either you have an old version of Airtime  or you are doing modification based on Old Thread.

      So lets start with showing you the folly of your ways
      Anyone reading this a find it funny about my grammar , I make no apology ,Go get a translator.
      "The Problem with education today is that it takes a university degree to switch on a light bulb"
      "You learn from your mistakes but wise people learn from others mistakes avoid Making mistakes there is not sufficient rooms to make them"
      "Innuendo","If's","Assumptions" and "Fear" are for politician.Who,What,where,When and How are for those seeking knowledge and care about Humanity.
      "I might be in Mud but that does not Make me a Wild Hog(pig)"
      “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
      "The only thing that remains constant is change itself"
      May the force be with you,until our path or destiny bring us in tandem.
    3. Vote Up0Vote Down Voisses TechVoisses Tech
      Posts: 1,423Member
      GOAL / Specific problem 1)
      Play ANYTHING randomly if there is no scheduled play, live show source, or Master source. Anything other than silence.

      This
      https://forum.sourcefabric.org/discussion/16909/autodj-sweetest-seen-fake-or-real-for-a-good-deal-free-free-no-unexpected-autoplay

      does exactly that
      There is a comment at the bottom not worthy of a reply cause if you read the post care fully it answer that question,but I guess some people have low attention span


      In my post here

      https://forum.sourcefabric.org/discussion/17139/link-show-is-a-nice-replacement-for-autodj-but-its-100-unreliable

      I mention about using linked show as autodj,
      • you just create smart blocks
      •  make them dynamic
      • linked them
      • just create it for any single 24 hours  in whatever pattern you want  and you never have to do anything again.
      • If you need to change it make sure you do so before the show start because you will not be able to change it on the fly. 

      Here are some relevant post

      https://blog.sourcefabric.org/en/news/blog/2839/Open-source-digital-DJ-Integrating-Airtime-and-Mixxx.htm
      https://blog.sourcefabric.org/en/news/blog/2838/Get-the-most-out-of-Airtime-smart-blocks.htm
      https://blog.sourcefabric.org/en/news/blog/2839/Open-source-digital-DJ-Integrating-Airtime-and-Mixxx.htm
      https://blog.sourcefabric.org/en/news/blog/2828/How-to-broadcast-live-in-Airtime.htm
      Post edited by Voisses Tech at 2016-01-06 12:02:26
      Anyone reading this a find it funny about my grammar , I make no apology ,Go get a translator.
      "The Problem with education today is that it takes a university degree to switch on a light bulb"
      "You learn from your mistakes but wise people learn from others mistakes avoid Making mistakes there is not sufficient rooms to make them"
      "Innuendo","If's","Assumptions" and "Fear" are for politician.Who,What,where,When and How are for those seeking knowledge and care about Humanity.
      "I might be in Mud but that does not Make me a Wild Hog(pig)"
      “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
      "The only thing that remains constant is change itself"
      May the force be with you,until our path or destiny bring us in tandem.
    4. Vote Up0Vote Down Voisses TechVoisses Tech
      Posts: 1,423Member
      GOAL / specific problem 2)
       do not know why you have be creating smart blocks all the time do this once
      a good way to shuffle is to
      just create a bash script that runs every 30 minutes
      have one that move out the songs  from one folder to another

      then make one file a watch folder and use the airtime import or just use Mixxx connected and create the pattern you want 

      Anyone reading this a find it funny about my grammar , I make no apology ,Go get a translator.
      "The Problem with education today is that it takes a university degree to switch on a light bulb"
      "You learn from your mistakes but wise people learn from others mistakes avoid Making mistakes there is not sufficient rooms to make them"
      "Innuendo","If's","Assumptions" and "Fear" are for politician.Who,What,where,When and How are for those seeking knowledge and care about Humanity.
      "I might be in Mud but that does not Make me a Wild Hog(pig)"
      “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
      "The only thing that remains constant is change itself"
      May the force be with you,until our path or destiny bring us in tandem.
    5. Vote Up0Vote Down Voisses TechVoisses Tech
      Posts: 1,423Member

      GOAL 3) 

      Remote connection From DJs and Clubs

      I want to automatically switch from automated play to sources which are already online and waiting to go live.


      Had me bursting sweat,cannot see much of what you want to achieve

      The Master is used for automatic connection of live schedule  (you have limited control)

      The Show Source for schedule connection (you can fully Control)

      The disadvantage on having the dj connect to additional mount is they are not using the interface hence no history and nothing is done on the Api life info so if you use the widget it will make no sense

      What I would recommend you do is you go through most of the  >2.1 videos found here

      https://www.youtube.com/user/Sourcefabric/videos

      and create either a video or screen shots so that others can help you.









      Anyone reading this a find it funny about my grammar , I make no apology ,Go get a translator.
      "The Problem with education today is that it takes a university degree to switch on a light bulb"
      "You learn from your mistakes but wise people learn from others mistakes avoid Making mistakes there is not sufficient rooms to make them"
      "Innuendo","If's","Assumptions" and "Fear" are for politician.Who,What,where,When and How are for those seeking knowledge and care about Humanity.
      "I might be in Mud but that does not Make me a Wild Hog(pig)"
      “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
      "The only thing that remains constant is change itself"
      May the force be with you,until our path or destiny bring us in tandem.
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