Last night I stumbled across a reference to a program called ZaraWebs RDS, that apparently was created to work in unison with ZaraRadio. It generates a playlist of songs that were played for display on your website.
The download link was dead, so I googled it to try to find out more about it and a active link to download.. The search showed ZaraWeb RDS on a lot of Portuguese websites, but on every one of them the program download links always pointed to http://www.casaresirratia.com, but that site doesn’t mention the program, and the internet archive of it wasn’t much help either.
ANYWAY.. My curiosity wouldn’t let up, and eventually (tonight) afrer jumping thru some hoops, managed to find a good link and then upload a copy of it to my own site, along with a tutorial (translated) some guy had posted on some forum.
As of yet I’ve only opened the program to take a look. But if anyone is curious about it I put a screenshot, download link, and the tutorial at: http://www.end80radio.com/zarawebs_rds.htm
www.end80radio.com/zarawebs_rds.htm
Buried Somewhere…
I remember seeing that and I’m reasonably sure it’s stashed on one of my hard drives somewhere. I’ll make it available if I can find it. I downloaded it along with the Zara Meter Bar.
DNAS Already There
If your streaming with mp3 and using Shoutcast DNAS server, you already have a “played” list being generated on the DNAS in “Song History”.
Song History
Integrating that into a website is so easy its ridiculous. The data comes from your mp3 file meta data…that is if you have your encoders set up for it..which they all do and can.
RFB
It’s Here Somewhere…
Problem is, Shoutcast doesn’t seem to generate a list when Zara is used.
Zara produces a text file that shows the currently playing song but not a history.
Where does Shoutcast look to pull the info? Zara will produce a log file of all played items with time stamp.
Found It…
I have ZaraRDS which you can download by clicking on that link.
But, looks like it is to interface Zara with an encoder to put the digital data on a digital transmitter. Probably not what you are looking for.
Hey, Is This It?
Well, a little super-snooping and I ran down ZIP FILE FOR ZARAWEBRDS.
This looks like what you are looking for.
Encoder Settings
“Where does Shoutcast look to pull the info?”
The setting is within each encoder your using. The character key to enter in your server details or title streaming is $combine$($mmss$)
This opens up the pathway for the mp3’s meta data to be streamed out to listener’s players. This is where the DNAS collects and displays the data on the song history, along with a time played.
RFB
Hmmmm.
Well, I know when using WinAmp player with Shoutcast Source and DNAS all you have to do is set “Enable Title Updates” in the Output – Yellow Pages to “AUTO”.
Looking in the DNAS server config setup there is only a parameter to set how many titles to show in the played.html history list page.
The Shoutcast “Encoder” tab only requests encoder type and bit rate.
I’ll try changing Title Updates to manual and put $combine$($mmss$) in to see what comes up.
Keep diggin…
Encoders
Are those encoders within Zara proprietary to Zara? If so they may not have a setting for the title streaming, and may be somewhere else within the Zara program itself where this data is configured for sending down the line.
I use SAM and its included encoders. All of them, including the OGG encoders and WMA encoders have the title stream entry box for the key code I gave earlier. The standard Winamp DSP plug-in encoders also have the title stream entry box where the key code can be entered. Should be on the same configuration window where you put your station title, IP address of the server and encoding password etc.
But it may be that its all configured in the Zara program somewhere…yep…may have to just keep digging.
RFB
I think a few missed the fact
I think a few missed the fact that I provided a download link in my original post!
Mram, I just download your link, and now recall that the softwareinformer website reports that the most popular used version of Zarawebs RDS is version 1.1, which is the same version that you uploaded. Whereas the link I provided is v1.2.
So it’s probably your link would be to the preferred.
Anyway, seems that sometime back, someone here describing a method of getting a playlist title generated so that it would display, while using Zararadio, Edcast, and.. icecast(?).. The point is I think that ZaraRadio needs help with this feature just like it needs help to stream.. those features aren’t built in – now as RFB stated when using Shoutcast it may be provided automatically, but my understanding is that it (Zara) doesn’t work that way with all servers.
But I dont know, this is all just assumptions on my part – but based on past discussion of part15 members about the matter.
All I do know, from multiple searches, is that this was a popular and commonly used companion to Zararadio particularly in Spain and Portugal.
Strange=======================================
Indecently, I searched for the last two nights for ZaraWeb RDS before I found an active download.. But now a brand new #1 result in google just showed up that provides numerous active links to the program.. This top results was not present in the last two nights of searching.. Isn’t that odd??
http://www.google.com/search?q=ZaraWeb+RDS
(I’m referring to the filecrop site at the first)
Zara Only A Player
Zara is basically an automated playlist with some bells and whistles. It does not perform the stream encoding.
Shoutcast Source handles the encoding and Shoutcast DNAS manages client connections.
Shoutcast Source can accomodate up to 5 different encoder settings, providing 5 different streams at different bit rates to the Shoutcast DNAS server.
I have two different encoder settings with different bit rates and it works fine. One streams off my local PC DNAS server, the other streams it to the DNAS server at listen2myradio.com.
The Zarawebs RDS looks like it polls the Zara current.txt file for playing file info and pushes it via FTP to a playlist.html file at your host. I haven’t finished setting it up but that’s what it appears to do.
By the way, it seems that you should have Zara drop the current.txt file in the system drive root directory (c:/). That was the only way I could get past a “missing DLL” error message when trying to point it to a different directory.
By the way, it seems that you
By the way, it seems that you should have Zara drop the current.txt file in the system drive root directory (c:/). That was the only way I could get past a “missing DLL” error message when trying to point it to a different directory.
I’ve had similar problems in other circumstances before with missing dlls, often the solution can be to simply place a copy of the dll inside the same directory of the program that’s not finding it.
Tricky At Best…
I tried putting the “missing dll” everywhere it said to and some other places also to no avail. By the way, the older Zara does not offer the option to set the “current.txt” directory, it’s stuck in the Zara directory. The newer Zara’s allow you to set the directory.
But, I found that by locating the file in Windows Explorer and copying the file location I could open the Zaraweb RDS and quickly paste the address into the required place.
Eureaka, It Works. Although I’m only running a test on a secondary player, it is uploading the playlist and updates as quickly as the file playing.
Here is THE LINK to the file so you can see what it looks like. It won’t be updating as I don’t run the secondary player all the time. If I can install it on the actual “On Air” server you will see it update.
Here is THE LINK to the file
Here is THE LINK to the file so you can see what it looks like. It won’t be updating as I don’t run the secondary player all the time. If I can install it on the actual “On Air” server you will see it update
Very cool. I haven’t gotten around to configuring the ports to the wireless router upstairs yet… but then again, it’s not from here that I’ll be streaming from.
But I’m glad to see the working example.
I’d prefer a 12 timeclock over the 24 though
Wow… your time clock just
Wow… your time clock just change to 12 hour format.. I know you didn’t do it from my suggestion, cuase I just posted that comment 30 seconds ago!
MRAM Zaraweb RDS LIVE
OK, I installed Zaraweb RDS on my “On Air” server and, IT’S WORKING!
Now the daunting task of updating all the MP3 tags as some are somewhat lacking.
MRAM 1500 PLAYLIST is now online.
Time permitting some tweaks will be applied and perhaps I’ll add it to the MRAM 1500 WEBPAGE.
Site Integration
That should be easy to integrate into your website as its plain ol html.
But after almost 15 years of streaming…I found people rarely want to know what played..and are more interested in what’s up next as well as what’s on air at the moment and how long will it be before their favorite program or song plays..aka ETA.
My setup is configured for that kind of info displaying on the website as well as a real time program schedule that changes whenever anything is changed in the day’s program lineup, like a live look at the automation program list while its running.
Glad you got that going. Perhaps Zara might include such features for web site integration in their next updates.
RFB