You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
143 lines
6.9 KiB
143 lines
6.9 KiB
<sect1 id="howto-streams">
|
|
<title>Online radio and TV</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>One of the major advantages of &kplayer; is the use of
|
|
<link linkend="howto-installation-mplayer">&mplayer;</link> as the multimedia
|
|
playing backend. It allows &kplayer; to support the widest variety of media
|
|
types and encodings. In addition to that, &kplayer; detects most playlist file
|
|
types and ensures that they are reproduced correctly.</para>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-types">
|
|
<title>Major stream types</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>The most widely used stream types for online media are RealMedia,
|
|
QuickTime, Windows Media and ShoutCast (MP3). &kplayer; will play all but very
|
|
few streams of those types. Choose <guimenuitem>Play URL...</guimenuitem> on
|
|
&kplayer;'s <guimenu>File</guimenu> menu, paste the stream address into the
|
|
<acronym>URL</acronym> box and select <guibutton>Open</guibutton>.
|
|
Alternatively, make sure your browser is configured to open &kplayer;
|
|
for the <acronym>MIME</acronym> types you would like to play with it, as well
|
|
as for <literal>rtsp:</literal>, <literal>pnm:</literal> and
|
|
<literal>mms:</literal> <acronym>URL</acronym>s. When you install &kplayer;,
|
|
&konqueror; configuration is done automatically, you
|
|
then just need to open <guilabel>File Association</guilabel> settings in
|
|
&konqueror; or in &kcontrolcenter; and move &kplayer; to the top of the list
|
|
for those file types that already had another program associated with them,
|
|
including the special types under the <literal>uri</literal> section.
|
|
Then you can simply click an <literal>http:</literal>, <literal>rtsp:</literal>,
|
|
<literal>pnm:</literal> or <literal>mms:</literal> link to your media, and
|
|
&kplayer; will start up and play it.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>If a stream has meta information embedded in it, &kplayer; will extract it
|
|
and display it in the <link linkend="parts-library">multimedia library</link>,
|
|
and if it finds the station name, it will also display it in the
|
|
<link linkend="parts-title-bar">title bar</link> and on the
|
|
<link linkend="parts-toolbar-playlist">current playlist</link>. Some music
|
|
streams also provide the name of the song currently being played. &kplayer; will
|
|
then display it in the title bar and on the current playlist instead of the
|
|
station name.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-playlists">
|
|
<title>Playlist files</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>If the file a URL points to is a playlist,
|
|
<link linkend="howto-installation-mplayer">&mplayer;</link> needs a special
|
|
option to be able to play that file correctly. &kplayer; tries to detect
|
|
playlist files by looking at the file extension. If the extension is
|
|
<literal>ram</literal>, <literal>smi</literal>, <literal>smil</literal>,
|
|
<literal>rpm</literal>, <literal>asx</literal>, <literal>pls</literal>,
|
|
<literal>m3u</literal> or <literal>strm</literal>, and the protocol is
|
|
<literal>file</literal>, <literal>http</literal>, <literal>http_proxy</literal>,
|
|
<literal>ftp</literal> or <literal>smb</literal>, then &kplayer; passes the
|
|
playlist option to &mplayer;. But sometimes a playlist file may have a different
|
|
extension, or a file that is not a playlist may have one of those extensions.
|
|
In those cases playback will initially fail, and you will need to open the
|
|
<link linkend="properties-general">File Properties dialog</link> from the
|
|
<guimenu>File</guimenu> menu and set the <guilabel>Playlist</guilabel> option
|
|
correctly.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-cache">
|
|
<title>Cache size</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>By default &kplayer; lets &mplayer; choose an optimal cache size, which
|
|
will work in almost all cases. But if you play a low bitrate media like a radio
|
|
station, it may take a while to fill the cache. In that case you can lower the
|
|
cache setting to 128 or even 64 kilobytes if &mplayer; does not do it
|
|
automatically. You can do that on the <guilabel>Advanced</guilabel> page for an
|
|
individual stream in the <link linkend="properties-advanced">File Properties
|
|
dialog</link>, or globally in <link linkend="settings-advanced">&kplayer;
|
|
Settings</link>. Alternatively, you can set a lower minimum cache size required
|
|
to start playback, the default one being 20%. That setting goes into the
|
|
<guilabel>Additional command line parameters</guilabel> field on the same
|
|
<guilabel>Advanced</guilabel> page, for example
|
|
<literal>-cache-min 5</literal>.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-embedded">
|
|
<title>Embedded streams</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>A lot of times a media stream will be embedded as an object into a web
|
|
page. &kplayer; supports that and will play the stream if it is configured as
|
|
the default player for that media type. But it is recommended that you right
|
|
click on the web page object and choose <guimenuitem>Start
|
|
&kplayer;</guimenuitem>. You will then get better interface and more
|
|
options.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-slaves">
|
|
<title>Playing through HTTP I/O Slave</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>In &mplayer; 1.0-pre4 there was a bug that made it impossible to play
|
|
<acronym>HTTP</acronym> <acronym>URL</acronym>s that had <acronym>URL</acronym>
|
|
encodable characters like a space in them. For those <acronym>URL</acronym>s
|
|
you can turn on the <guilabel>Use KIOSlave</guilabel> option in the
|
|
<link linkend="properties-advanced">File Properties</link>. &kplayer; will then
|
|
use the <acronym>HTTP</acronym> <acronym>I/O</acronym> Slave to play the file,
|
|
sending data to &mplayer; through a named pipe.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-finding">
|
|
<title>Where to find stations</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>There is no single best resource for finding online radio and TV stations.
|
|
<ulink url="http://www.vtuner.com/">VTuner</ulink> online directory is pretty
|
|
good but not very complete.
|
|
<ulink url="http://www.radios.com.br/">Radios.com.br</ulink> is rather spammy
|
|
but more complete, their directory of online
|
|
<ulink url="http://www.radios.com.br/novo/tvs.htm">TV</ulink> and
|
|
<ulink url="http://www.radios.com.br/novo/inter.htm">radio</ulink> stations from
|
|
all over the world probably is the most complete on the Internet today. Finally,
|
|
<ulink url="http://www.tvradioworld.com/">TVRadioWorld</ulink> is an excellent
|
|
resource for finding on-the-air <acronym>TV</acronym> and radio stations (online
|
|
or not), and it links to online streams for some of them.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2 id="howto-streams-recording">
|
|
<title>Recording streams</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>Open <menuchoice><guimenu>File</guimenu>
|
|
<guimenuitem>Properties</guimenuitem></menuchoice> for the stream you want to
|
|
record, go to the
|
|
<link linkend="properties-advanced">Advanced page</link> and enter
|
|
<option>-dumpstream</option> into the <guilabel>Additional command line
|
|
arguments</guilabel> field. Then start playing the stream.
|
|
A <filename>stream.dump</filename> file will then be created in the current
|
|
directory. You can later rename it with the correct extension. Or add
|
|
<userinput><option>-dumpfile</option>
|
|
<filename><replaceable>filename.ext</replaceable></filename></userinput> to the
|
|
same <guilabel>Additional command line arguments</guilabel> field. The option in
|
|
that field have to be separated with spaces, and the file name must not have
|
|
spaces in it.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|