I used to be able to successfully play streaming radio with my 56kbs modem (even with IE 5/6.) But IE, Opera and KM lately doesn't create a buffer beyond 15-20 seconds. Is there a way to increase the buffer for streaming radio over KM 1.5.1?

I also used to be able to listen to streaming radio successfully with MWP and also VLC player. But it has been so long since I have used the players except for local audio that I seem to have forgotten how. I feel so old!

And even tring to listen to streaming radio following instructions for the players is unsuccessful.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

I really don't know about the buffer. What lets the radio station music/voice play? I can listen to this one http://www.nwrnetwork.com/radiostations/WEZU/player-HIGH/newplayer.htm

It just says "Radio Player Window" and has a picture of a radio. I tried some others but they opened a tab which said "empty".

Thank you. But the old and new URL's seem to loop back and forth. Maybe it is just a bad time, I'll try again later.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

Charlie, You are not the lamer on the pic.

If the player works at all You have done everything right. The players are all preset to download as fast as they can. They do their own connecting.

That connection of Yours may be slow lately. Try to check bandwidth via browserspy.dk.

I am on DSL and the download speeds vary between about 17 kb/s and well over 220.
Sometimes it is at almost 17 for days. Music cannot reliably play at that speed. Try the shoutcast stations with low bitrates. That what I do during such shit speeds.

p.s. This ancient prefs.js string should prevent that the K-Meleon asks/nags You: do You want to load down or listen music or view video

user_pref("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.openFile", "audio/x-m3u, audio/x-mp3, audio/x-mpegurl, audio/x-scpls, audio/scpls, audio/mp3, audio/m3u, audio/pl, audio/x-pn-windows-pcm, video/x-ms-wmv, application/vnd.rn-mplayer2");

the opposite: alwaysAsk.openFile



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2009 12:08AM by guenter.

Thank you gunter. These sound interesting, particularly the BrowserSpy.dk. I will check them out.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

Buffers can be setting in multimedia tools like VLC and others players.

K-Meleon in Spanish

1) You can set KM's disk cache to a larger size, this may or may not help with the streams buffering.

2) Exactly how are you listening to the streams within your browser? Are they flash players, or are you playing them through a browser plugin such as quicktime or windows media? (...And in the last case, which player?)
If you are playing them through a plugin, you'll need to adjust the cache and/or buffer settings in the plugin/player.

3) Don't try to stream with VLC if you need to buffer. VLC's buffering is total crap.

4) To play a stream in a seperate player (assuming it's not flash based), you need to first make it stop playing in the plugin. This can be a royal pain, especially with certain plugins. With some plugins, they have a dialog box where you can tell them what formats to be associated with, just turn off the mp3 & playlist ones & you should be fine. With others, your only option is to remove the plugin from KM.

4b ) Another way to get the url, without touching the plugins, is to have adblock+ installed & make sure the option for putting tabs on flash & java objects is turned on. With that done, you will see a transparent tab above or below the embedded player. Right click that tab & choose "copy url". It's that simple.

Now that you have the url, just open your player & paste it in. MPC works pretty well for streaming, although my fav player for streaming music is winamp.

----
"People who live in glass houses ....should close the friggin curtains!"

pluggin folder should contains the following dlls

npdsplay dll ,
npmozax dll,
nprjplug dll
nprpjplug dll
NPSWF32 dll


you will be able hear the straming sounds

@ Drahken, nanton

I have KM's memory cache set to 32MB and disc cache at 64BM. I figure this is probably much higher than necessary even though I have keep History set to 35 days. Do you think these mem settings are high enough?

I listen to streams through the KM browser. When I try listening to streams with WMP or VLC I always get an error that the URL cannot be found. Perhaps this is because I do not have the DLL's that nanton spoke of. I will download them to the plugins folder and see if that helps. The only files I currently have in the plugins folder are npnul32.dll, ShockwavePlugin.class and np32dsw.dll. I have been using WMP and VLC only for local audio and video files, for this VLC seems to sound much better than WMP. I have buffering in WMP set to 60 seconds but since I have not been able to stream with WMP obviously it has not been helpful. Also, I have downloaded MPC player and will give it a try.

Thank you for the tip regarding AB+. I have it set to add the tabs to Flash and Java but I did not think it was possible to get the URS's.:O

I will try the thigs you guy's suggested.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

Those dlls have nothing to do with using the players seperately, they're for using the players within KM (as plugins). Keep in mind that KM can access plugins that aren't in it's folder. If you go to about:config & search for "scan", you'll see that KM auto-locates wmp, quicktime, java, and acrobat, and finds them in their own folders.
When you're listening to a stream, does it look like a miniature version of windows media player is on the page? If so, then you're listening to it through the wmp plugin.


As far as cache size, those settings are fine for regular web pages, but not so good for large files like audio or video. A peculiar behavior of the gecko engine that KM (and FF/seamonkey) is built upon is that it will only allow any single file to fill a maximum of a certain percentage of the available disc cache (I haven't figured out the exact numbers yet), even if there is plenty of room. For example: If you set your disk cache to 100mb, you might find that no cached file is larger than 20mb, but if you increase the cache to 200mb, you might find individual files up to 40mb. It's a very weird setup.
In any case, try increasing your cache settings. It might not help, but it's quick & easy to try, and you can always set them back to what they are now.

It would make it easier for us to look into this if we knew what site/s you were having problems with, so that we could check them out for ourselves.

----
"People who live in glass houses ....should close the friggin curtains!"

One radio stream I listen to is at http://radiotime.com/WebTuner.aspx?StationId=28813&ProgramId=20631&;. Actually radio time has a lot a net stations. I istalled those other DLL's into plugins, appearantly for no good reason I guess. But for some reason the stream at the above URL now plays about 40 seconds then has to stop and buffer for about 5 seconds. But I guess the better performance could be caused by many other factors.

Usually the streams I listen to are Flash, But occasionally I will play something that opens in WMP.

I installed MPC v.6.4.9.0. It seems pretty compact and light weight for having so many options. But like WPM 9 and VLC, it errors when I try to open a URL.

A while back on both XP and also my ME machine I could set WMP to buffer for 60 seconds then listen to radio streams almost entirely with out interruption. And then as now, I was on dialup.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

Hmm... the player on that site isn't loading at all for me right now.

What kind of error are you getting with the players, and what kind of link are you trying to use in them? Keep in mind that players only play audio, video, and playlists, not flash/swf files. As far as codecs/formats, vlc plays just about every known format, without needing any other codecs or files. If vlc can't play it, it can't be played. (MPC plays a lot of formats out of the box, but still needs extra codecs for some formats.)

For flash ones, you could try right clicking & choosing settings, then look on one of the tabs & you'll see an option for how much data the site can store on your comp. Turning that up higher might help.

----
"People who live in glass houses ....should close the friggin curtains!"

The stream you gave as an example demands Microsoft Silverlight,
but usually Radiotime seems to stream through the CBS Player, and
does not need Windows Media Player.
Anyhow everything works only with javascript enabled, as in most
Radio Guides, which I find to be an unreasonable demand.
Have a look for example at

http://www.usliveradio.com/
and
http://www.listenlive.eu/

who list the direct streams to US and European radio streams.
You can add a Mediaplayers.kmm file to your macros folder, which
would give you a right click context menu to open the streams
directly. No need for any plugins besides the Flash plugin
inside the plugins folder, because this calls up the players directly.

Open Notepad and copy and paste the code below :
-----------------

# K-Meleon Macros (http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?id=MacroLanguage)

# ---------- Mediaplayers ----------------------------
#
# Dependencies        : -
# Resources        : -
# Preferences        : -
#
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

realone_play_url {
exec("D:\\RealOne\\realplay.exe " . $LinkURL);
}
mediaplayer_play_url {
exec("C:\\Program Files\\Windows Media Player\\wmplayer.exe " . $LinkURL);
}
winamp_play_url {
exec("C:\\Winamp\\Winamp.exe " . $LinkURL);
}

# ----- PRIVATE

_Mediaplayers_BuildMenu{
# Link Popup context menu
$__r1=_("Play in Realplayer");
$__m1=_("Play in mediaplayer");
$__mb1=_("Play in Winamp");
setmenu(LinkOpenExternal,macro,$__r1,realone_play_url );
setmenu(LinkOpenExternal,macro,$__m1,mediaplayer_play_url );
setmenu(LinkOpenExternal,macro,$__mb1,winamp_play_url );
}

$OnInit=$OnInit."_Mediaplayers_BuildMenu;";

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
$macroModules=$macroModules."Mediaplayers;";

----------------------

Adapt the paths to the locations where your RealPLayer, Windows Media Player or Winamp are, and don't forget that there always have to be double backslashes
in the path description.

Save the file as Mediafiles.kmm , as all files, not as .txt, and
put the file inside the macros folder.
After a browser restart, the macros should appear in the right click
context menu for links.

PS: You can also have a look at my little streams collection at:

http://one.xthost.info/eichhein3

inside "added".
Mostly for a little bit elderly people .

Regards

Fred

woa that's quite a collection.. groovy
thanks for sharing!

Bah, silvercrap. No wonder you're having problems. WhyTF can't M$ quit trying to force their own propoetary versions of standardized stuff on everyone?? We don't need silverlight when we already have flash & we don't need .net when we already have java.
[/rant]


Are you looking specifically for online versions of "real" stations, or are you just looking for streaming music? If you just want streaming music, there are many sites you can use:

http://www.shoutcast.com is a directory of audio streams (mostly music, but I think they have some news, sports, etc ones too) that play in winamp. Different stations have different bitrates & you can search for ones low enough to play on dialup.
You can also access shoutcast from within VLC. Open the playlist & look around, the exact location depends on whether you have v.9 or v.8. In v.8 you open the playlist itself & then click manage->services discover->shoutcast radio. In v.9 you click "playlist" on the main window, then additional sources->shoutcast radio.
If you have winamp installed, you can also access shoutcast from within winamp's media library.

http://www.live365.com/ has many different stations & you can choose to either listen in your browser via flash, or have it open in your mp3 player of choice. The main drawback is that they have an annoying ammount of commercials for live365 in most of the stations. The stations have different bitrates & you can have it only show you ones under a certain rate.

http://www.last.fm/music/ doesn't have "stations" as such, but you can search for a song, artist, or type of music & get a station/playlist based on that.
Last.fm might not be good for you though, IIRC, it streams at a high bitrate, too high for dialup. You'll have to try it for yourself & see (I was fortunate enough to finally get rid of dialup a couple yrs ago). It plays via flash

http://dir.xiph.org/ Icecast has streams in several different formats (ogg & aac+ stream higher quality at lower bitrates than mp3). The streams will play in winamp, vlc, or any other player (if you have problems launching a stream, you can just right click the m3u or xspf link & copy/paste it to vlc). The streams vary in bitrates. It used to have an option to search by bitrate, but seems to have removed it. The only way to do it now is by trial & error.

----
"People who live in glass houses ....should close the friggin curtains!"

I have updated my little collection of streams at:

http://one.xthost.info/eichhein3

inside "added".

Fred

Anyone tried Spotify? Always found it plays well on my ancient setup :drool:

¡uoıʇsǝnb lɐuıƃıɹo ǝɥʇ pooʇsɹǝpunsıɯ ı ɟı ʎɹɹos

Quote
Paul

¡uoıʇsǝnb lɐuıƃıɹo ǝɥʇ pooʇsɹǝpunsıɯ ı ɟı ʎɹɹos

Wacky! Care to explain how you did that? :O

--- sig ---

Foobarly

Fliptext

http://fliptitle.com/

:O:cool:

I have updated again my little collection of streams at:

http://one.xthost.info/eichhein3

inside "added".

Fred

New update of my little collection of streams at:

http://one.xthost.info/eichhein3

inside "added".

Fred

I have uploaded the updated page of my
lttle stream collection to a new location.
Thanks to Guenter.
Look for the file in :

http://dhost.info/kmeleonskins

Fred

plugin files like audio are not stored in kmeleon cache. they are stored in temp folder. it doesn't make any difference what you set your cache to. you can see what files are stored in cache in the latest kmeleon by looking in cache panel of prefs. Streaming radio isn't usually stored on the disk at all, no need, it's streaming. The buffer is in memory of the plugin.

I found on my system that setting the memory cache to any value except "Auto" caused it to not be used. ymmv. The browser does seem faster on Auto.

What's really causing your problem: well, could be connection speed or latency or could be that your stream provider changed format or encoding and now you can't play because your plugin is out of date or there is just not enough bandwidth to play it.