Forum user: jaddle

I've done more research on this now:

first of all, there's no way flowplay can display the stream metadata, because it isn't requesting it from the server. I sniffed the packets with wireshark, and flowplayer never sets the 'Icy Metadata' header, so the metadata is never set.

I've seen conflicting messages about how feasible it is to get this metadata in flash at all - apparently, it's possible, but rather difficult. This comment explains a little bit what's necessary, in vague terms:http://www.flexiblefactory.co.uk/flexible/?p=51#comment-3556

Any chance of flowplayer ever supporting this? I rather doubt it. :( I wonder if there's any other way that I could sync the web page's javascript to the audio being played? Maybe I'll have to use java intead.. ick.

I'm having all kinds of trouble getting that demo to work properly, actually - I copied everything over to my server, updated a few of the URLs to point back at the ones on the server, and everything plays ok, except that onStart is never called! I can't figure it out - everything seems to be the same version on my server as on flowplayer.org. the code is unchanged except to add the server to the urls for the jpg and mp3, and directories added to the swf urls to point to where they are on my server. Why won't onStart fire?

I did all of this so that I could find out why I can't see the metadata, but I'm now finding that I can't even test it.. any ideas from anyone?

I tried another test, just like the demo you linked to:

onStart: function(song) { alert.song.metaData.TIT2; }, metaData is still never defined...

perhaps this is because I'm not playing mp3 files, but mp3 *streams* (from an icecast2 server), so the metadata isn't really in an id3 tag attached to a file, but is embedded in the stream?

The metadata *is* being sent properly - when I listen using mplayer, I see the updates:

Starting playback...
A: 3.2 (03.2) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%
ICY Info: StreamTitle='1260478582';
A: 7.4 (07.3) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%
ICY Info: StreamTitle='1260478587';
A: 11.4 (11.4) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%
ICY Info: StreamTitle='1260478592';
A: 19.6 (19.6) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%
ICY Info: StreamTitle='1260478597';
A: 23.2 (23.2) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%
ICY Info: StreamTitle='1260478602';
A: 27.3 (27.3) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%
ICY Info: StreamTitle='1260478607';
A: 31.4 (31.3) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.3%

That 'StreamTitle' is what I'm hoping flowplayer can see.

I tried that just now, and I just get '$f().getClip().metaData is undefined' errors. Looks like the metaData just isn't set at all for audio clips...

So I guess there's no way at all for flowplayer to listen for metadata changes? that's a real letdown.. anyone know any other flash player that can do this? or is it a limitation in the flash handling of audio streams?

Is there any way that flowplayer can watch for updated metadata in an audio stream and fire an event? I have a live stream playing with tags that get updated periodically. When I watch the stream with mplayer, I see messages like "ICY Info: StreamTitle='blablabla';" whenever the update happens. I'd like to have flowplayer respond to these events, but I haven't found a way to do so.

There are a few cryptic references to an 'onID3' event scattered around the forums, but nothing in the documentation and I can't figure out any way to make that work...

Any suggestions?

I assume this fix was supposed to be included in 3.1.0? It's still not working for me though, even with the latest version... onBegin is a usable workaround for now though - especially since the buffer doesn't seem to be working properly anyway (see the note inhttp://flowplayer.org/forum/5/18198).

I have an application playing very low-bandwidth mp3 streams. It was working fine with flowplayer 3.07, but now that I've upgraded to 3.10, it's broken! It definitely looks like a bug in the new version.

Basically, it starts playing, but then stops randomly - sometimes less than a second in, sometimes after 10 seconds. It rarely lasts any longer than that though.

I've tried a bit of testing with javascript - the onStop event never gets called when it stops this way.

I've also tried adjusting the buffer length, thinking that it might be related to that, but this setting seems to be completely ignored - bufferLength: 20 still starts playing immediately. I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work...

I do think it has to do with the buffer though, because when I change the clip url to a static file (sent through apache directly) it works just fine. It's only when it's streamed through icecast that there's any trouble.