Wowza Community

Can Icecast grab an audio stream from Wowza server and relay it as an Icecast stream?

I’m trying to find a way to encode a live video/audio stream to Wowza which Icecast can pick up on (the audio component) and relay out as an Icecast stream. The Wowza servers I manage now can transcode and I have experience with splitting out an AAC audio stream from Wowza. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how to get Icecast to pick up and restream this but I realize that Wowza is spitting out a protocol (RTSP, RTMP or HTTP [HLS, DASH, SMOOTH, HDS, etc.] ) which Icecast doesn’t understand–am I right? But if you wanted to hack this can you think of a way?

The desired end result here is that my live streaming people (dozens, at different locations around the world) would only have to run one encoder onsite at live events, a video/audio encoder to Wowza. These events present difficult circumstances in various ways and so I’m trying to make this more simple by making it only one encoder to remember to run and to keep the complexity down on their little laptops and network connections. Some of these folks (in my small non-profit) are tech-challenged and are volunteers. I think you get the picture.

I use Icecast for an audio-only companion stream [to the video stream] because I’ve found that Icecast with a hacked version of jPlayer (non-Flash player) can reach a wider spread of platforms, some of which JW Player/Wowza audio fails for. And I’m trying to make my audio-only stream work for EVERYONE (or as close as possible) who cannot get the video stream due to crappy internet connections, etc. JW Player with it’s Flash requirement fails for some where the Icecast and jPlayer combo works. I’m streaming HLS to JW Player for the live video–the premier component of the event.

Thanks for any ideas you guys might have.

Hi Boyd,

Sorry for the late reply. No, Wowza does not support shoutcast/icecast out. Wowza can re-stream from a shoutcast/icecast source and stream to RTMP, RTSP, supported HTTP clients, and push to mpeg-ts/multicast.

Richard

Does this work now? We are wanting to do something similar. RTMP (live stream) -> Transcoder (audio only) -> Icecast. All within the same Wowza machine.

Hi,

This is in our backlog and I believe it’s actively being looked at, however I can’t confirm if the feature will be approved and if so, any time-scales for it’s availability.

I do recommend that you keep checking the latest release notes which can be found at the bottom of the Software updates page.

Regards,

Jason

Any update on this? We would still really like to see this feature.

Hi,

This is in our backlog and I believe it’s actively being looked at, however I can’t confirm if the feature will be approved and if so, any time-scales for it’s availability.

I do recommend that you keep checking the latest release notes which can be found at the bottom of the Software updates page.

Regards,

Jason

Hi,

Yes, we introduced support for Shoutcast/Icecast as a stream target in 4.5. You can find out more instructions on how to do this in the following article.

Regards,

Paul

Hi,

it got a little quiet on this feature request. Nonetheless it would still be very useful to be able to connect to Wowza as an icecast client.

I understand that you’ve introduced icecast as a streaming target in 4.5. But it still doesn’t seem to be able to stream to an icecast client.

Is this feature still being considered ?

Best

Gaylord

Thanks for your question @Gaylord Zach…let me get an update for you from our engineers and I will let you know very soon.

With HLS delivering playback on most Android and iOS devices, we currently do not have any plans to offer an outbound protocol strictly for IceCast.

We do continue to offer support for re-streaming ShoutCast or IceCast for playback on all compatible player technologies. @Gaylord Zach

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-re-stream-audio-from-shoutcast-icecast