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Linking to your stream
Once you are connected to a Canstream server and are webcasting, how do your listeners receive your stream? Options are:
- Type the stream address into their player
- Embedded player in your website
- Connect directly to your stream from your website
- Connect via a streaming media meta file
To ensure that as many people as possible can easily access your webcast, and to get over many problems that different setups can cause, we generally recommend that you connect via the M3U metafile created automatically by our streaming server (example below).
Try adding a hyperlink (image button or "Listen Live" text) using this example code on your website:
<a href="http://example.canstream.co.uk:8000/your_mountpoint.mp3.m3u">Listen Live!!</a>
Linking to an MP3 stream
Its is important to link to a live MP3 stream via a metafile, an m3u, rather than linking directly to the stream. If the MP3 stream is linked to directly this can cause problems such as:
- Extended buffering
- Download a short amount (approximately 30 seconds) and only playing that short piece
- Not opening in default media player
- Opening stream in browser
- Combinations of the above
Failure to link correctly to the stream via an M3U is a common problem and is much easier than it may initially appear. The sequence of data would be:
- "Listen Live" button on website
links to
- M3U file (the URL of which may be something like www.mywebsite.com/streamname.m3u)
which opens
- Your MP3 stream
All the M3U file contains is a single line text file with the address of your stream, this would take the form:
http://myserver:8000/streamname.mp3
The M3U metafile can be created in any plain text editor, such as NotePad. Note: When saving your text file, if using NotePad, click "Save as type" and use "All Files". This allows you to be able to add an extension (.m3u if connecting to an mp3 stream) without ending up with a .txt extension. You need to avoid having your file be called something like mystream.m3u.txt
Using the HTML5 audio tag
Another, more up-to-date method, is to use the HTML5 audio tag as in this example:
<audio controls><source src="http://example.canstream.co.uk:8000/yourmountpoint.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
Your browser does not support HTML5 audio - please upgrade your browser or click on this link http://example.canstream.co.uk:8000/yourmountpoint.mp3.m3u
</audio>
If you have any difficulties connecting to your stream using the details above, please copy and paste the stream URL - for example, http://example.canstream:8000/yourmountpoint.mp3 - into your favourite media player such as Winamp or VLC.
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