Edcast crashing regularly?!

[CharmingNathan]

Hello,

I hope you can help.

I have an issue where Edcast appears to crash once every couple of days and take everything with it.

My setup is that I have Edcast and ZaraRadio running within Virtual Box on an XP Pro platform, with Cent O.S. being the host.

After a couple of days, Edcast's Peak Meter will be stuck at maximum, with no sound being streamed.

The current 'resolution' I have for this is to shut XP Pro down, and re-start it; I do not close Virtual Box.

When opening Edcast and clicking on connect it picks the stream up from ZaraRadio and sends it to Centova Cast in host with no problem, for a couple of days.

Any ideas please?

Thanking you in anticpation.

[DrO]

using something other than Edcast which is supported (as Edcast is not) is the only thing i can suggest.

[CharmingNathan]

Originally Posted by DrO

using something other than Edcast which is supported (as Edcast is not) is the only thing i can suggest.

Thanks for your prompt reply DrO.

Without wishing to sound pedantic, when you state Edcast is not supported, do you mean in terms of this forum, the software setup I have, or in general?

Someone mentioned to me that Edcast were no longer being used by most Internet Radio stations and that it was no longer being developed even, is that true?

[DrO]

it hasn't been officially provided for a few years (it was taken down iirc) and as a 3rd party solution, it wouldn't really be supported on here either (depends if anyone else using it can offer any help, but like you note, no one is really using it anymore anyway).

[CharmingNathan]

I appreciate your reply DrO, and furthermore, appreciate my next query is borderline off-topic:

Does anyone know why it is no longer being developed, or did other people experience similar problems to me using it?

It just seems to have gone 'out of fashion' very quickly. I only started my station up at the beginning of last year/end of year before that, and Edcast was very strongly recommended to me as being THE piece of software to use. No offence, but I always found it easier to use than Winamp too, with a more attractive G.U.I. Is B.U.T.T.still supported, or has that gone the same way?

I assume that Winamp with D.S.P. plugin is now regarded as THE piece of software to use, though I suspect this forum maybe biased? ;-)

[DrO]

all i know is everything from oddcast got taken down - the source code i believe was released (or was already available) but it's been a few years since all of that happened.

'THE' software to use varies and is really what you prefer you should use (unless it's broken or you're willing to put up with the issues). and i wouldn't say Winamp + Source DSP is 'THE' software to use - it fits some people's needs but for others, you really have to consider going the paid software route for something which is dedicated to the task.

there was a new release of B.U.T.T. just over a month ago (so compared to a lot of other broadcasting software, that's pretty actively developed).

[jaromanda]

If you really want edcast ... I developed edcast for a while after Oddsock took it down (mainly for licensing issues I am led to believe by the fine people at Orban)

Latest downloads - https://code.google.com/p/edcast-reborn/downloads/list

[DJ-Garybaldy]

You could give Altacast a go it's Edcast spin off http://altacast.com

It's also worth noting you need Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 & 2008 installed to be able to run it properly as it is wriiten mostly in VB with .NET

I've used it quite successfully for a while now.

[Bryon Stout]

BUTT has done me solid on all OS's. I force all my broadcasters to use it.

[CharmingNathan]

Thanks for all your replies - very interesting.

At present I am currently running Winamp with a D.S.P. Plugin (Shoutcast) and B.U.T.T. for Icecast, so currently not using Edcast at all.

However, the problems still persist, suggesting they are not Edcast's 'fault':

1. Icecast regularly re-starts itself (about once every 20 minutes).

2. Usually once every other couple of days, I lose all audio, to the extent I have to re-start XP Pro, although I do this without re-opening Virtual Box.

3. Despite having the right tick boxes ticked within D.S.P., and the correct directory listed in B.U.T.T., neither will display current song title -

although Point 3 is comparatively academic to the first two!

I have sent an Icecast error log, to Centova Cast, who state:

"-- EROR connection/_handle_connection HTTP request parsing failed
-- EROR connection/_handle_connection Wrong request type from client"

This mean that your client/source is not compatible with Icecast, or there is a misconfiguration somewhere in the middle.

Nothing we can do there either, Edcast should work just fine on a healthy environment, if it doesn't then most likely there is something wrong with your system."

I believe my Edcast is and was configured correctly.

Any ideas please?

[DrO]

check for Icecast updates and consult their help / forums

[CharmingNathan]

Thanks, DrO, I will do so, but have you any idea as to why the song display is not working?

I am using Winamp with D.S.P. plugin,with the correct tick boxes checked in the plugin for SHOUTcast.

[jaromanda]

Originally Posted by garybaldy72uk

it is wriiten mostly in VB with .NET.

actually, if altacast is indeed based on edcast (like edcast reborn was), then, there is absolutely no VB and no .NET

the "redistributables" that edcast and altacast require are a Visual C run time dll ... edcast reborn had no such dependency, as I know what I'm doing

Also, I sincerely hope AltaCast don't end up with the same issues oddsock had, regarding re-distributing the winamp version of enc_aacplus.dll in their RadioDJ Plugins - to quote Greg Ogonowski at Orban ....

This is the intellectual property of AOL and is not licensed for use outside of Winamp or for any other commercial use.

The Winamp enc_aacplus.dll was hacked some time ago to allow others access to the AAC/HE-AAC encoder.

This is a clear violation of International software copyright, and before this gets out of control with AOL (Winamp) and Via Licensing, I thought I would e-mail you with a “heads-up.”

Oddsock was given a takedown notice several weeks ago for this same reason.

Which is why edcast-reborn never included enc_aacplus.dll in any downloads

[DJ-Garybaldy]

The horse has bolted on that one I'm afraid there are far to many enc_aacplus.dll downloads available off 100's of different websites.

You just need to do a Google search to see how many different sites there are offering it for download.

If it's publicly available there isn't a lot that can be done about it. Bit like the cracked copies of automation software out there they are never going to stop it from being "Distributed"

This is the intellectual property of AOL and is not licensed for use outside of Winamp or for any other commercial use.

According to a wiki page found via google search it says that Fraunhofer own the enc_aacplus.dll file NOT AOL.

[jaromanda]

Originally Posted by garybaldy72uk

According to a wiki page found via google search it says that Fraunhofer own the enc_aacplus.dll file NOT AOL.

I can only go by what greg said to me a few years back. As far as fraunhofer go, I think they "own" enc_fhgaac.dll

Please note, I was told that enc_aacplus.dll was the "intellectual property" of AOL, not that AOL "own" enc_aacplus.dll

yes, the horse bolted years before oddsock took down edcast - but, orban did go after him and, well, obviously got their way. To be honest I think oddsock was looking for an excuse to dump edcast, all he had to do was remove all mention of enc_aacplus and NOT distribute it, and all would be fine with orban

[DrO]

enc_aacplus used the Coding Technologies libraries and Coding Technologies were then bought out by Dolby (who as i've found out will happily target people redistributing things that they own). the current enc_fhgaac is using libraries directly provided from Frauhofer.

in either of the cases, redistribution of those plug-ins (be it the old one or the new one) is not meant to be allowed and we've seen some of the repercussions of such things when AOL were in charge.

however, if either of them has to be used, enc_fhgaac is the better option but relying on Winamp encoder dlls to do things (when there are existing libraries which can be easily obtained and used instead) is somewhat dumb imho and i don't really rate such solutions all that highly in that case (especially with software, natively or via 3rd parties of that software, that are also redistributing other old Winamp plug-in dlls as well).