How to Setup an Audio-Video Streaming Server on VPS

Configuring the server to work as a streaming server

This option has becoming more and more common in the world and pretty much has a huge applicability as the reasons for this service are becoming more an everyday thing. Generally speaking there are two ways of configuring the server to work as a streaming server and the two ways kind are the same and not. This all sounds quite confusing and it would be better just to explain it. This classification is kind of rough as you can hardly see it anywhere classified as these but it really is so. One of the ways is the free one but in the same time much more complicated even using very detailed instructions from Google-ing internet. They are pretty complicated so I will only explain a couple of steps so you can figure out what is it about.

SHOUTCast and Windows Media Encoder

First of all if you don’t have some knowledge about network connections than you can completely skip this step as it requires average knowledge about configuration of networks, routers and some commands that you use on your PC to get around more easily than standard users do. This step also braches into two parts that is two programs that you could use to create and audio streaming file, and they are SHOUTCast and Windows Media Encoder. SHOUTcast is now a pretty used tool when it comes to this as more and more people are using it to simply broadcast their radio stations audio to internet to other listeners all over the world. For listening this all you have to have in program Winamp, which is a product of the Shoutcast. Everything you need to know can be found on their website including troubleshooting standard procedure of setting up an audio but also video streaming, and the problems that people are facing that are commented and resolved through a forum. Another thing is that SHOUTCast supports Windows, Linux and other platforms. But most of the pages support multiple programs that give the possibility of audio streaming and one of those programs is Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. However, as I’m informed Windows Media Encoder that is used for configuration of servers is substituted by another program called Microsoft Expression Encoder. The difference is that the older version supported streaming from you own private PC making it your own little private server, however the quantity of upload speed of your broadband dictated the number of parallel connections which was generally a very small number. The new version doesn’t support that anymore and you can now only stream audio/video from a server that is with Windows Server 2008 R2 installed. This Encoder remains free too, but the configuration is not that simple, especially if you are new to this area. The whole configuration can be explained in few steps but there is more to it than few steps.

Internet radio listening

After encoding files you want to stream the next in preparing your files is to create metafiles for the browser. The metafiles are added to the HTML tag of your page as WMP needs to be referred to the files it should play but not download. A direct reference would give a sign to the browser that you want to download that file and not stream it through your player. There is a lot additional typing when it comes to creating this type of server; however I haven’t used this way of configuration as it is probably the most difficult one and the most restricted one.  A solution is also there for the ones that don’t want or know to manage around servers that well and their configuration, but as you can presume this solution costs a nice amount of money. These programs simplify the whole process of streaming audio and video files, but of course you still have to have a server from which you will stream your data. Streaming is commonly confused with other terms, like with Internet radio listening. This is a way of streaming but it is called live streaming. The difference is that you can’t effect on the content that you are listening through live streaming as it is ‘live’. Radio stations use internet to send their tunes or any voice besides radio waves. Streaming however, allows you to ‘jump’ inside your content from one part to another, so there is a significant difference. If you want to set up and audio or video streaming server on your VPS, all you have to do is buy and install server software. There are many brands of this software available, but among the leading options are Adobe Flash Media, Apple DSS and Wowza. The combination of these programs together with VPS will give you very high quality media resources especially if you are aiming into creating audio/video provider with some quality tunes and videos for any reason whatsoever. The better the bandwidth the more customers and the better streaming quality can be set to watch or listen on the Internet. The procedure of setting up a server with these programs has been simplified through tutorials with couple of steps. After which you encode the files and save them to the destination directory that the program will use as the source.

For those that think this is also a challenge for them that they cannot overcome, there is also solution for that. Special servers are made for that intention only with everything preset up and ready to go. Basically all you have to do is to prepare your content and put it in the destination directories. It can’t get easier than this and you won’t find anywhere easier than this, however the cost for this server is greater than the one you would normally pay for that same server without this service being set-up before. There are many articles on this theme as this service is getting more and more popular within the IT world especially as the prices for the resources need for this (VPS hosting services the most) are dropping more and more from time to time.

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