Darwin Streaming Server: Open, Functional and Free

Once installed, configuration is very simple via the Web browser-based Streaming Server Admin utility, and most things are just a point and click away. The admin utility server is accessed by accessing port 1220 of the server machine via a Web browser and logging in as the 'streamingadmin.' The interface to the admin server is simple and to the point. There are pages for modifying general settings, creating playlists and monitoring the status of the server and the users connected.

The Admin Server has also been localized for French, German and Japanese.

Unfortunately the Windows and Mac releases have some bugs in the Admin Server, preventing some things from being configured via the GUI interface. For instance, when attempting to create a playlist from the Admin Server utility on the Mac, Perl errors are found and the playlist is not completed. And on Windows, the location of the 'movies' folder can not be set via the Admin utility. Most of these are known bugs and the developers say they will be fixed in the next release. Until then, work-arounds for some of these are mentioned in the upcoming configuration tutorial.

This is the beauty of open source — work-arounds are possible. Bugs from the other giants can become features we have to just live with.

Streaming Media

To stream multimedia on-demand, you place hinted QuickTime files in the movies directory (specified via the Admin utility), and pointing clients to the RTSP URL of the server and the media to be viewed: rtsp://servername/media.mov. To allow access to multimedia on-demand from a Web page, placing the appropriate embed tag, including the RTSP URL, to the server and the media file in HTML does the trick. The only problem experienced here was when I tried to stream files that were not hinted. Make sure your QuickTime movies are hinted. Trying to stream non-hinted movies results in an error at the client.

Playlist Broadcaster

Through the Playlist Broadcaster utility you can multicast prerecorded media in a sequence to create a virtual radio or video show. The broadcast appears to be a live broadcast, yet it is actually prerecorded and stored on your machine. This is a very nice feature and it works just as it is billed. However, there are a few catches. Files to stream must have the same number of tracks and the tracks must be the same types of tracks. So the list can include all audio or all audio/video files, but not six of one and six of the other.

Further, if the media pieces are audio/video files, each file must also have the same frame size. When a file with a different type or frame size is included in the list, an error is generated and the playlist cannot be started. And, of course, all files have to be hinted QuickTime files.

Also, multicasting only works over a local network, as most routers on the public Internet are not multicast enabled. That’s true of all multicasting, not just that supported by the QTSS/DSS.

But other than these little gotchas, the Playlist Broadcaster feature works great. When a client connects to a stream in progress, it appears as if they have just joined a live broadcast in progress. The QuickTime 5 client even shows the status as 'live broadcast.'

Playlists are created from within the Admin utility and the process is quite simple. The hard part is deciding what order and method to play files in the list. There are three choices: Sequential, Sequential Looped, and Weighted Random, with the last having a few extra necessary choices. Sequential mode plays the files in the order they appear, until they have all played. Sequential Looped plays them in the order they appear, until they have all played and then starts over at the beginning again. Finally, Weighted Random plays the files in random order and replays each piece only as often as specified by the defined 'weight,' given as a numeric ranking.