Tonight KDX Worldround Radio wanted to re-stream the Live 6-Hour Election Night Special from Democracy Now.
At first it linked just fine but ran for 2-minutes and dropped.
This kept happening 5-more times and then KDX bailed and went to a test tone for the night.
By contrast we are able to watch the video live-stream of the same thing without any drops whatsoever.
Despite the many strengths of Zara V 1.6.2, for us at KDX, a very weak feature has been the live stream link capability which never works reliably for us.
Many things could be wrong.
Zara uses Windows Media Player (WMP) as its sound engine, as disclosed by Johny C. at RagFM... something the Zara Manual fails to mention.
Our stream computer is running Windows XP and therefore an older version of WMP, whereas the video stream we are watching is coming in on a Windows 7 machine.
KDX has the luxury of being able to fail because the only audience is me and I'm curious and will keep trying different arrangements.
If you have tips for dealing with live re-streaming we will be here all night.
Feeling Smarter
Oh.
The Re-Stream command in the Zara Playlist includes a little user-settable timer that tells Zara how long to re-stream.
If, during initial tests, you set the timer for 1-minute, then it will re-stream for 1-minute.
If you forget to reset the timer to re-stream for 6-hours, it will not stream for 6-hours.
Once you figure that out, you may be smarter than you were earlier.
This may not be a good solution for everybody; I'm just saying it works for me.
Some time back, I stopped trying to make one computer do all the heavy lifting and just picked up a pair of junker laptops to use as audio sources. At any moment, I can have the freeware MIXXX deejay program (www.mixxx.org/) open on one box while the other is set up as a Skype/VOIP terminal for interviews (my mixer has Aux Send controls which provides a mix-minus signal). Next hour, I will be editing on one laptop using Audacity (www.audacityteam.org/) and browsing the web for interesting audio, while the other is set up for Charlie Davy's DAC CARTWALL (charliedavy.co.uk/dac-cartwall/).
Likewise, I can receive a stream from an outside source on one machine and just let it freewheel, and if I really had to, could use one as a clumsy-ish CD player. My automation system is on one dedicated mini-tower computer that I already had, and everything is routed through a mixer. Three computers, cheap as coal.
Once upon a time, pro radio studios were populated with three or more tape "cart machines", which were single-purpose devices and very expensive ones to own and maintain. The concept still works. A weekend shopping on Craigslist, a few emails, and the studio is online.
Again, this solution is not for everyone, especially if you want to keep things uncluttered and on the simple side. For me only, its a suitable solution based on my prior experience working with multiple audio sources.