Locality Switch

The Community Broadcasting Foundation has just announced in their July 2009 Update that they will soon be introducing grants for IP-Based Outside Broadcast equipment. Here’s the full announcement:

If your station would like to do outside broadcasts (OBs) using the internet, you will soon have the opportunity to apply for up to $2,500 toward IP-based OB equipment through CBOnline grants. These grants will be available only during 2009/10 – with applications closing on Monday 12 October 2009.

If you’re new to IP-based OBs and need some ideas for how to go about it, download the Mobile Broadcasting for Community Radio Stations Manual. It describes what options are available and whether IP-based OBs are suitable for your station.

This is fantastic! I’ll start putting my application together ASAP. While I couldn’t put together a full OB rig (kitted out with proper PA gear, outboard processing, UHF mics, etc.) for under $2,500 it would certainly buy the basics any station would need to get started. And that, I believe, is what this grant is about – getting stations started.

The part I find most interesting about this announcement is the Mobile Broadcasting for Community Radio Stations Manual. Let me say first that this is a great idea, publishing a concise manual to give stations a run down 0f how to perform an IP-based OB. It’s the right idea, but I think it has been executed in the wrong way.

The part that was unexpected and disturbing to me was that proprietary software was used for all of the examples! NCH’s Broadwave was pretty much used exclusively for the streaming, and Hamachi’s Log Me In was used for remote computer access. Both proprietry pieces of software, and both require you to buy a licence (they both have limited free versions, but it’s a licencing minefield).

While there is nothing wrong with each of these pieces of software, and I don’t blame them for using them as an example, mention should have been made of the open source alternatives. Shoutcast or Icecast are both massively popular pieces of software which allow you to stream stably for long periods of time. Shoutcast is closed source, but 100% free, and Icecast is 100% open source. I know they both work incredibly well because I use them both on a regular basis.

As far as remote access goes, I thought VNC would have been the option of choice. It’s open source, has a massive community around it, and is also easy to get running.

There was an appendix which made a brief mention of other streaming solutions. On this list I found NCH VRS (a logging program, not even proper streaming!), Real Producer Basic, VLC, Audio TX Communicator (a hardware solution), Ustream and Ubroadcast. At least mention was made of one open source piece of software, that being VLC.

The CBF is on the right path in producing this manual, but surly community radio should be trying out the open source products before dishing out cash to companies for proprietary software. It would be great if this manual could be revised to include mention of open source software.

96Kbps multiplied by three hundred listeners is how many Gigabytes in a month? What about 128Kbps? If you’re working with Audio over IP and are trying to figure out how much bandwidth you need, the sums can make your head hurt.

Luckily, Google knows the answers to all of your tricky questions. All we have to do is ask it a question, and we get an answer! Let’s try.

I typed “96Kbps * 300 in GB/month” into the search bar, and upon pressing enter, I got a result: 96 Kbps * 300 = 9 028.50894 GB / month

Awesome! It’s a real help when you need to really crunch some numbers in regards to streaming, for example. With this brilliant feature, I can fantasise about the bandwidth requirements of an audio stream with hundreds of throusands of listenets. See:

24.414Gbps is a lot of bandwidth! But, if I was getting to 200,000 simultaneous listeners, then I think I’d be getting pretty good advertising revenue. One would hope, at least.

Google also knows about Petabytes:

See, that’s pretty handy! Plug any calculation in there (and I mean any calculation), and Google can find your answer.

Hopefully you find this as useful as I do.

Does your station stream over the internet? No? *Gasp* You’re missing out on a huge market your station could be reaching. Don’t worry – I’m going to take you through all you need to know to get started.

But wait, isn’t community radio about serving your local area? Well, yes and no. I’m of the opinion that we should offer as many different ways to get our station across to our listeners, whether or not they are in our local area. Sure, programming decisions should be made with the licensed area as the primary focus, but as in terms of who is listening, I believe we are responsible for reaching everyone who wants to hear our programs.

After all, community radio certainly offers a huge range of very different programming, much of which would appeal to people all around the world.

So, what do you need to get started with streaming?

• A spare computer at your station, and an input from your studios into the sound card
• Encoding software – I recommend EdCast
• A reliable internet connection from your studios – I have found ADSL2+ to do the job very nicely
• A streaming licence from APRA/AMCOS – this is calculated as a percentage of your income from your stream
• A streaming provider, we’re going to focus on shoutcast.
• Permission from your board / management (I’m going to assume you have this taken care of)

Before you start piceing the bits together to start streaming, you need a basic understanding of TCP/IP networking, and also knowledge of how streaming actually works. You could just build your stream from the instructions I have here, but when it all falls over, who has the knowledge to fix it?

Let’s take a look at the path your audio will take:

Audio –> PC –> Encoding software –> Internet –> Shoutcast Server –> listeners, listeners, listeners

So, your audio will come into the PC, EdCast will encode it, it will be blasted over the internet to your Shoutcast provider, who will then distribute it to all who want to listen. Simple, right? Not quite…

Let’s explore the different aspects of this audio chain through the ether:

Your encoding software has a vital part to play. It will take a feed from your soundcard and transform it to your chosen format. There are heaps of formats to choose from, but the primary ones you should consider are the MP3 and AAC+ codecs. Why? Because these are the most compatible. Choosing a codec is beyond the realm of this article, but I will try to post more on it in the future.

Within your encoding software, you also have to configure the bitrate – this is technical jargon which roughly translates to quality (and is measured in Kbps – Kilo-bits/second). The higher the bitrate, the higher the quality – however, the higher the bitrate the higher the bandwidth required by both you and the the people listening. The trick is to go for somewhere in the middle of the road, say 64Kbps for MP3 or 32Kbps AAC+. But it all depends – I suggest you try them all out, and see how it goes.

The Shoutcast provider is where all your listeners connect to. They have all the bandwidth which they let you use. Typically, providers in the USA are cheaper, but make sure you shop around for the best deal. You want reliability, heaps of bandwidth, and a reasonable price. Remember, if your provider fails, your stream will suffer – and no one will be able to listen.

Another consideration you have to account for is your internet connection at the station. Can it handle the extra bandwidth requirements? How much will it cost? The best ISPs offer un-metered uploads, meaning you don’t pay for what is being sent out of your connection. This is brilliant if you are doing streaming, because streaming is basically just a constant upload! Make sure you read and understand all the fine print from your ISP before you start – you don’t want to get into trouble.

That’s all for our getting started guide on streaming. I know it isn’t quite a step by step guide which will guarantee success within three weeks. I feel the best way for you to fully understand streaming is to get your hands dirty with it – download the software, install it on a spare box, sign up for a cheap Shoutcast provider, and see how it all works.