MpegDec Playlist format details and my first local .pls stream!



Welcome, Guest \| Home \| Search \| Login \| Register


Author	MpegDec Playlist format details and my first local .pls stream! (Read 11421 times)
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	on: October 22, 2023, 18:19 I was stumped for a bit when MpegDec was not playing some of my playlists, so I decided to get to the bottom of things and here's what I discovered: MpegDec is very particular about the formatting, down to the last character!! On one .pls file, I had the first line with the word 'playlist' capitalized; that was a no-no and it refused to load. But the real issue I had with a few I typed-out was this: MpegDec expects to see a return character after the line that specifies the url you want it to play! So because I had failed to add one on some of my .pls files, they refused to playback (you have no idea how long this fault in my .pls files had plagued me and it wasn't obvious until I went and edited a .pls file I knew worked and voila, the stream played great!) This of course will not help any online stations that like I mentioned before, refuse to play (which I believe is) because when they output to the browser (in my case iCab) they output as 'audio.mpeg' instead of 'audio.mp3' - now the funny thing there is that the streaming file actually is an mp3 stream, but to MpegDec it doesn't recognize it! But that aside, I did a test using a little http file server I have running on my media computer and lo and behold, I made a .pls file referencing the file path to one of my music mp3 files on the http shared directory and MpegDec streamed it beautifully!! Then I really got excited about streaming my own mp3s, so I took an mp3 directory, shared it on the http server and was able to stream two mp3 titles from it once I put their file paths on a .pls file on my little Mac and everything worked like a champ!!! I'm one huge step closer to my mp3 streaming library goal now! I wrote and hosted the .pls file in the directory so it's easy to download and playback on MpegDec. My next venture will be to see if I can automate the process just a bit more using something like Icecast. I tried out setting Icecast up but got bogged down with the technical details as well as a couple other media streaming servers like Serviio, which while easier to set-up, I couldn't get my Mac to connect to it Anyway, my http server and .pls combo is helping me do what fancier and more automated setups are eluding my goal until I can figure them out I've been looking up how-to's but none have given me anything I could follow along, yet anyways

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #1 on: October 22, 2023, 18:49 Nice work. Could you provide the specific pls format needed for MpegDec to work correctly with it?

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #2 on: October 22, 2023, 19:39 Great job getting it to work @cballero! I have Mpegdec on my IIci streaming a radio station from a playlist. The setup works. I didn't remember about the return character, so after reading your post I just opened my working playlist file to check. You're right! Same here, it has a return character at the end. Another difficulty I had with MpegDec is that it seems particularly strict with the file type/creator codes. I couldn't get it to play any randomly downloaded mp3 file until I fixed type/creator manually.
Last Edit: October 22, 2023, 19:40 by Bolkonskij
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #3 on: October 22, 2023, 20:47 I also followed some (most delicious by the way, lol) breadcrumbs 68040 left regarding IE 4.01 68k and it's helper app tools. With it, I managed to get http://17lifers.hopto.org:8080/ to play nice with MpegDec, which I knew it could based on MpegDec being able to play the stream file if I changed the type/creator codes! @wove -> okay! so the .pls format needs to be *'exactly'* like this: 1. [playlist] notice it's all lower-case, don't cap that 'p'! 2. NumberOfEntries=X where 'X' equals the number of radio urls and/or MP3 files available over http 3. File1=http://URL where 'URL" equals the radio links themselves or MP3 files available over http 4. [a single return character] you must add a single return after* the last URL entry you make to the .pls file, otherwise the .pls file will simply not run on MepgDec!!* Again, back to the IE 4.01 radio MpegDec playback trick: 68040's brilliance shone when he said he used IE's built-in application helpers to help MpegDec play radio stations that otherwise fail to play simply by using iCab and possibly many other web browsers. Who knew such a simple workaround could open the door wide open to MpegDec (potentially) working with so many more web radio stations like 17lifers! The way I got it to work is I fiddled with the helper portion of the preferences and when IE created a file stream on the desktop, I then dropped that file (which gets named the website's own name) right on MpegDec and it connected to and played the station just perfectly! @68040 -> I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're simply a mad genius, man!! Now for a bonus super-pro (workaround) tip: while the file is downloading from the IE or iCab, you can drop it on Greg's Browser on-the-fly and change the filetype and creator to MP3 (make sure to add a space after 'MP3' <- the space is crucially important or it won't change the filetype) and creator to 'JESW' and it will make the stream file double-clickable the cool thing about it is that the stream will continue to download even though you changed the file and creator types in the middle of the download!! I tested it on two links I knew didn't work straight out-of-the-box with MpegDec, 17Lifer's Radio Station and the http://sc2b-sjc.1.fm:7704/ link that was posted as well. It's a way to easily cheat MpegDec into opening streams that otherwise fail (more like refuse, tbh) to open
Last Edit: October 22, 2023, 23:02 by cballero
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #4 on: October 23, 2023, 10:11 @cballero - Too much praise for a lonesome keyboard warrior. I just remembered the problems I had with my first Linux releases streaming anything meaningful, which then lead me back to my OS/2 days which then lead me back to ... Too much time spend before the screen and too little spend hunting down new girl friends, I guess. In any case, I am done installing apps & games (except for my own locally hosted Chat GPT server, which is still to come) and am now busy compiling my 1000+1 private and tech notes into Notepad Deluxe databases. As part of that I also plan to set up a URL Manager Pro list of all my vintage URLs. If anyone is interested in this I can upload that to the Garden and post the link here.

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #5 on: October 23, 2023, 12:21 Absolutely, please share your bookmarks :-)

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #6 on: October 24, 2023, 17:02 @68040: don't ever sell yourself short my friend!! You've inspired me to test out the maximum possibilities of Mac's 68k OSes! As I type, I'm whittling away at setting up either an IMAP or POP3 ISP hosted domain email in a way that I can check several mailboxes on a small Android tablet using the very simple Basilisk II app. I've downloaded Mulberry but I'm not exactly sure what needs to be setup in the back-end yet, lol I still see me somehow cajoling one of our esteemed programmers to either make a browser plug-in that will allow a web browser to think it's an e-book reader, and possibly act like one with unzipped e-pub files! a stand-alone e-book reader would be even sweeter! I imagine that even MacLynx (albeit only if its source code is available someplace?) could serve as base for a simple text-only e-book reader! I still rummage around for that WriteNow button enhancement tool and want to see if it or another word processor can tackle newer Word .doc files. I may give-in and end-up using Word 6, but I think you managed to use AppleWorks/ClarisWorks 5 to read Word files as well? I want to take advantage of every little tool and setup possible to work in Mac's beautiful OS!

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #7 on: October 24, 2023, 17:29 @cballero - I found the easiest to setup e-mail client on 68k was Mail Drop. Small and neat. Unfortunately, doesn't come with SMTP Auth, so you have to use Baton Mail, but other than that, it's a very nice client. Give it a try if you're going down the IMAP route! Quote from: cballero I still see me somehow cajoling one of our esteemed programmers to either make a browser plug-in that will allow a web browser to think it's an e-book reader, and possibly act like one with unzipped e-pub files! a stand-alone e-book reader would be even sweeter! I imagine that even MacLynx (albeit only if its source code is available someplace?) could serve as base for a simple text-only e-book reader. I hear ya! I think a epub reader would be very neat.@Classic_Has_Classic, how much work would it be to enhance MacLynx in that respect or use its foundation for such a reader?

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #8 on: October 24, 2023, 17:40 @cballero - Forget Mulberry, it looks as ugly as it wurks on the inside. I don't want to belittle the effort the old programmers put into it, but gosh they must have been designing GUIs for mainframe apps before they wrote that. Instead try your luck with Eudora Pro and STunnel. I wrote a short guide for that. If you follow it you don't have to anguish about IMAP or POP. You can simply use both, as I do. If you want to do Unix style development on the Mac, you might want to give Mac06 or MacMint a chance to prove their metal on your box. As far importing Word documents go, I found that MacLink and the like are no real help, as almost all modern word processing programs output for Word6 at the earliest - the Windoze version. And even so the version numbers are the same, Microsoft was infamous back in the day for bringing Office versions to market with incompatible file formats, despite matching version numbers. Yet the magic trick is to store the file in RTF format. It has changed so little over the years that you can afterwards import even complex documents in either MS-Word. iText or Apple Works (plus a few more). PS: Make sure you don't save them files in UniCode, or you'll get weird characters for any char that is stored with more than 1 byte. I wrote myself some QuicKeys scripts to automagically clean that sheyit up, but this might be bit overkill for your purposes. Just stick to any standard ASCII PC char set and you should be fine.
Last Edit: October 24, 2023, 18:29 by 68040
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #9 on: October 24, 2023, 18:46 @Bolkonskij - While I was adding notes to my ever expanding info database, I stumbled across some tidbit of information that might be of interest to you. I had found this in an obscure vintage developer forum and just stored it away somewhere where I wasn't supposed to find it again. It speaks about the II GS but maybe it might help explain/debug your mysterious system crashes, too.

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #10 on: October 25, 2023, 00:18 @68040: Hmm that "obscure vintage developer forum" comment re Claris XTND looks suspiciously similar to the comment I made a few years back in that "obscure vintage forum" called The Macintosh Garden
Last Edit: October 25, 2023, 04:02 by MTT
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #11 on: October 25, 2023, 08:40 Copy & Paste maybe? To be honest, I found my own stuff on some of those site, too. But its good to know that my posts are funky enough to attract the attention of the truly famous.

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #12 on: October 30, 2023, 14:24 @cballero - Just to add to your list of streaming options: I successfully managed to stream MP3 podcasts via Gopher. It took some trial & error, as you must not try to download/stream the playlist directly, but let Gopher handle it all by clicking your way through the different screens, until the actual play dialog box pops open. A precondition for this is that the list of "helper apps" was set up correctly under Gopher's "Preferences".

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #13 on: October 31, 2023, 07:25 That's terrific 68040! I'll play around with it and maybe this tip will also get added to the official website too

	Pages: [1]

© 2021 System7Today.com.
The Apple Logo, Macintosh™, Mac OS™, and others property of Apple Computer, Inc.
This site is in no way affiliated with Apple Computer, Inc.