ezstream README
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ABOUT EZSTREAM
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Ezstream is a command line source client for Icecast media streaming servers.
It began as the successor of the old "shout" utility, and has since gained a
lot of useful features.

In its basic mode of operation, it streams media files or data from standard
input without reencoding and thus requires only very little CPU resources. It
can also use various external decoders and encoders to reencode from one
format to another, and stream the result to an Icecast server. With reencoding
enabled, ezstream is a very flexible source client.

Supported media formats for streaming are MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora.
Metadata support is available for MP3 (ID3v1 only) and Ogg Vorbis.

Ezstream is free software and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
See the COPYING file for details.



PREREQUISITES
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Ezstream depends on:
 * libshout 2.2.x (http://www.icecast.org/)
 * libshout dependencies, such as libogg, libvorbis, libtheora, etc.
   (http://www.vorbis.com/ and http://www.theora.org/)
 * libxml 2.x (http://xmlsoft.org/)



INSTALLATION
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The ezstream software uses the GNU auto-tools to configure, build and install
on a variety of systems. Aside from the standard autoconf options of the
configure script, a couple of additional options are available:

  --enable-examplesdir=DIR  example configuration files installation directory
                          (default: DATADIR/examples/ezstream)
  --with-xml-config=PATH  use xml-config in PATH to find libxml
  --with-ogg=PREFIX       Prefix where libogg is installed (optional)
  --with-vorbis=PREFIX    Prefix where libvorbis is installed (optional)

The compilation and installation process boils down to the usual

    $ ./configure --help | less         # Skim over the available options
    $ ./configure [options] && make && [sudo] make install
                                        # Configure, build and install
                                        # [as root] the software

If this procedure is unfamiliar to you, please consult the INSTALL file for
more detailed instructions.



USAGE
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Once ezstream is successfully installed, type "man ezstream" (without quotes)
on the command line for a comprehensive manual. This distribution package also
comes with example configuration files that can be used as a guide to configure
ezstream.

Note that all by itself, ezstream is not particularly useful. It requires a
running Icecast server to stream to, which then relays the stream to many
listeners. If this comes as a surprise, browse to http://www.icecast.org/ for
a lot more information, resources, and other source clients.



EXTERNAL DECODERS/ENCODERS
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Ezstream should be able to work with any media decoder and encoder that
fulfills the following requirements:

 1. It needs to be executable on the command line and not require a graphical
    display to function.
 2.1. A decoder needs to be capable of sending RAW data to standard output.
 2.2. An encoder needs to be capable of reading RAW data from standard input.
 2.3. A combined de-/encoder needs to be capable of sending streamable media
      to standard output.

Media formats that ezstream does not support directly are passed through
unaltered. Whether they work or not depends on the level of support offered
by the version of libshout ezstream is linked with.

The following incomplete list of programs shows a few that are known to work.
These are also used in the example configuration files:

 * MP3
   - Decoder: madplay (http://mad.sf.net/)
   - Encoder: lame (http://lame.sf.net/)

 * Ogg Vorbis:
   - Decoder: oggdec
   - Encoder: oggenc
   Both utilities are in the vorbis-tools package (http://www.vorbis.com/).

 * FLAC:
   - Decoder: flac (http://flac.sf.net/)
   - Encoder: (None. Not supported by libshout at the time of writing, and
              thus cannot be used by ezstream.)

 * Ogg Theora:
   - Decoder/Encoder: ffmpeg2theora (http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/)



OPERATING SYSTEM SPECIFIC NOTES
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 * Ezstream and SunPRO cc/c99 on Solaris:

   Ezstream may not build with SunPRO cc/c99 "out of the box" if a threaded
   libshout was built with gcc. This known issue results in the following error
   message from the linker:

     ld: fatal: option -h and building a dynamic executable are incompatible

   This is related to gcc and GNU ld using different compiler/linker flags,
   related to POSIX threads, than the SunPRO compilers. These are being passed
   on to ezstream, where cc or c99 ultimately chokes on them.

   Ezstream compiles with both cc/c99 and gcc if libshout was built with Sun's
   compiler. If libshout was built with gcc, compile ezstream with gcc as well.