Icecast Radio Directory usability & bugs.

[thesandvolcano]

The number of stations here is huge guys... Unweildy. At the very least I would like high quality/high bitrate streams listed first.

On finding a new station to retain in a current .xspf file, I must add both to the "Playlist", manually merge, before finally re-saving the now updated .xspf file. This too seems unweildy. Why can't we right-click the new Icecast station and 'save to..' any existing .xspf, .asx, .pls etc. This would really aid categorisation/organisation given the sheer number of stations. Cheers.

A quick update. You could also get rid of: "Duration", "Album", "Disc number" & "Date" fields from the station list box as they are all empty. Replace these with 'Encoding', 'Bitrate' and the like that are sortable. Much more useful.

Another update. So i'm someway down the huge station list and decide to check the "My Music" directory or the Playlist and such. On returning to the Icecast Radio Directory, my previous position in the list is now lost as the list has auto-scrolled back to the top. I can manually scroll back to my current position and the currently playing station will still be highlighted, but this is clearly no good given the size of the list.

Ok, so i'm giving up for now since after manually merging (drag & drop) single stations into a named (192.xspf, 256.xspf, 320.xspf etc) file using the vlc Playlist window, the XML processing is clearly bugging out in that i'm ending up with unnecessary, node nesting after closing and re-opening vlc.

A DAC and a couple of Wharfdales really got me interested in the great quality radio available, but alas given its current state the Icecast Radio Directory clearly needs an overhaul.

[zcot]

yea, crazy list for sure!

As for sorting the list as is, the columns are configurable and you can take away all but title, genre, and actually uri helps to at least see some obvious locations like .ru or .cn links if you're located in Central Florida for example. (right click the column area)

So, right there is 3 levels of sorting, and if you add that with the search function, sure it's still crazy but at least it's more like fun crazy instead of unreal crazy!

And, it's really insane, and I think maybe it's just supposed to be crazy like that.. lol

You can search some rock and get some wild Bee Gee's remix thing that's not rock, but, ok, it's rocking, it's fun.

see here, there's over 18,000 streams available:
http://dir.xiph.org/
(same thing there, you can't sort that too specifically.)

As far as sorting like you mention, that would be cool, but, I think that bitrate, sample rate, etc are only obtained after you make the connection to the stream. So, the info available is only what is provided on the stream directories.

Now, but, what about the playlist thing? I haven't had any trouble with it. It's a bit clunky of a way, but I've been able to do it without any glitches. I'll go to the cast directory and repeatedly right-click add to playlist maybe 10 or 15 times... then I go back to the playlist panel and mess with them there. If I like it, I'll drag it to a specific playlist -carefully under that list.name.xspf tree only, -then right-click saving only on that playlist main title name -> overwrite. Are you not experiencing that? Is there a possible bug here?

[thesandvolcano]

Thanks for the reply Zcot. Definately one of the largest lists i'v ever come across... I mean presenting this much information to the user has always been a problem, and a list box is as good a solution as any I guess. After starting up vlc and selecting the Icecast dir for the first time we have to wait a little while the stations are retrieved. After this, if I 'right-click->Info' a station i'v yet to tune into, the encoding and bitrate are already known. A user facing a list this size can only benefit from their inclusion by default. This one addition makes a barely usabable list... well usable, especially for one like me who's looking for quality first. Jazz has never sounded so good, and I don't even like Jazz.

What you describe in your last paragraph sounds much the same as what I was doing. I should state that i'm using v3.0 here. So I have a 320 bitrate station added to the playlist as you described. If I save this single station to file, I get to conveniently drop an "320.xspf" file into "My Music". The first problem is that vlc's view of "My Music" does not update until you close and re-open vlc. After re-opening vlc and My Music, I have a "Playlist" folder that contains my now stored station. If I 'right-click->Info' on the "Playlist" folder I get to change the "Title" and the "Save Metadata" button becomes available which I then click (changed to "320" because I wanna throw high bitrate stations in here). Vlc correctly updates the "My Music" view but fails to store the change. If I close then re-open vlc the "320" has been replaced with "Playlist". I got around this by editing the XML by hand.

I basically repeated the above for 256 and 192 kbps stations, so I have 3 distinct .xspf files stored and labelled ready to accept new stations from the "Playlist" but only after 'adding to playlist' from "My Music". After adding the 3 lists to the "Playlist" I set about hunting down high quality stations from the Icecast list. On finding a station of interest I must first check the encoding/bitrate, "right-click->add to playlist", then navigate to the "Playlist" and drag-drop the station into the correct list according to bitrate. On returning to the Icecast dir, the list has auto-scrolled to the top so I can't easily pick up where I left off. While this is very clunky indeed, it did seem to function as expected in that the simple directory structure looked ok as I added more stations. When finished I "right-click->Save playlist to file.." each of the 3 lists, overwriting as necessary. After closing then re-opening vlc the resulting directory structure as viewed from "My Music" is no longer the clean and simple three separate station lists I prepared earlier. Something of a jumble to say the least, in that I had duplicate directories inside directories. For example "192->La WebRadio.." became "192->192->La WebRadio..". Also of concern was that the "320" list now contained references to the "192" & "256" lists after I'd gone out of my way to keep them clean, tidy and separate.

I'll be the first to admit that I ain't that clued in with playlists and such, but I ain't no noob neither. I ended up with such a jumble that I actually felt 'nooby'. I should infact visit the playlist help pages given I'v never really played about with it before, but still I think I'v described a few bugs along with the clunk in the prior paragraphs to warrant a post here. In truth, if the sortable encoding/bitrate data were available as suggested I would never have bothered with these playlist shenanigans as I have always gotten by without playlists. Oh-well...

Edited this post for missing sentence & spelling twice now... pfft!

[zcot]

haha! Ok, yea. I see it now for sure. By the third time I added another list I just went ahead and named it omg-horror.xspf HA!

I haven't experienced that before, but I think it's because I haven't had more than one list open at a time when I saved.

Clearly that's where it's coming from, when multiple lists are open, it's not saving "sub" lists distinctly even when you specifically select save on a sub tree section.

I suppose it doesn't have that functionality even though it appears like it could.

I saved all that mess as an m3u file and it created a flat file of all the entries and sub-entries.

So, I guess what I think of as "the playlist panel" is THE playlist.

You should do a bug report, or maybe that's a feature request, here on the forum.

[thesandvolcano]

Even if the playlist behaved as expected, I would be here 'til next christmas trying to separate the high/low quality streams. I really wouldn't bother the volunteer coders with the playlist aspects of the Icecast dir. Of sole concern must surely be to turn a barely usable list into a useful list, since vlc has already gone to the trouble of fetching such a mighty list.

For some context, last night I web-searched basic flac streams. Found some of course, but its the ease of access that's the problem. Some wanted me to download a sponsored media player. Others are happy with the vlc plugin for Firefox. Others could have been opened through vlc's network stream option. Taking this into account I actually want an exhastive list so I can 'tune' from station to station with ease. No playlist shenanigans... No web-searches and convoluted streaming options.

I found a group of stations offering 320kbps over six genre's (Hi On Line). I wondered if they were present in vlc's Icecast list. Using the Icecast "Search" I found them. Point being... I would never have found these stations without a web-search, and now that I have them I want the ability to 'tune' from one station to the next much like a regular radio. As unweildy as the list currently is, it is both necessary and desirable.

If the Icecast list displayed and sorted first on 'bitrate' and alphabetically second, all of problems and nuance's described thus far in this thread disappear. The list is tamed!!! Long live the list!!! If I were to ask a vlc volunteer for anything, it would be to strip out the list's unused fields and singularly add "Bitrate" as it's already available in each stations metadata. And while your at it, have it default to list high-bitrate stations first.

So Zcot... Since your a nice & green "Big Cone-huna", you gonna help tame this list by bringing it up at vlc's next conference call? My DAC & Wharfedales are crying out for this change and for me, this is now a must-have feature.

[Myth024]

I will first note that I'm aware of how old this post is. I will also note that here in 2019, the Icecast Radio Directory still doesn't have a good filter system. While it's not hard to use a "search" field to narrow down things, it would still be nice to be able to be more granular. A nice thing to do would be to eliminate a group of URL's or IP's from search results. (noticed some "ad" streams that I'd like to block from seeing). Maybe add BOOLEAN options to the search field?
So we could do something like electronic AND dance in the search field and see all the electronic and dance genera. I suppose you could even extend that to add additional search language phrasing. So you could do things like.. GENRE = dance AND Electronic + bitrate = 320 AND 128 I might even suggest development as some kind of stand-alone search console that extends the search feature for testing. *shrug*

Maybe this isn't a windows specific thing anymore or maybe this goes somewhere else. I ran into this place because I was trying to find a plugin or someway to stop hearing these Radiomony stations that "aren't available in my area" or others that are just short 30 seconds "play premium by going to X" and then disconnect. So I was trying to eliminate stations like that from the list.

Well, thanks to anyone that bothers to see a post this old.

--drew--