audio files

I have been helping a friend with audio files posted to a web server. First of all, we had to enable streaming audio as an option on our existing web server. Then I had to figure out the best way to stream a multiple day conference. I started out creating a Adobe Flex project which resulted in the Flash file being uploaded to the web server. It was pretty simple as I have been using Flex at work for more than one and half years and found the Adobe Flex Sound help page very useful. After finishing the simple interface with Flex I wanted to try other things. I found a very simple M3U file format that iTunes uses to load a playlist. The only problem for us was that the MP3 audio files were behind a password protected folder, so that did not work as iTunes never asked for a username and password to access the folders behind HTTPS. I then found an open source project that plays a series of audio files by configuring an XSPF formatted file. The last task that I tried was to create a podcast. I did not really know what a podcast was except I had listened to them in iTunes. I found a great Apple document explaining how to create a podcast without using a special tool. I found out that a podcast is really just an XML file that stores content in an RSS feed format. I was very easy to create an RSS feed using Apple's podcast specification document. I have since learned that you can do the same thing in Apple's Garage Band, but at least I understand what a podcast really is.

Today I had the latest new task of learning how to edit an existing MP3 file. We needed to remove the first 12 minutes from an MP3 file that was 49 minutes long. I asked my son how to edit them and he informed me that Apple's GarageBand would do it. Today within 15 minutes I had to file loaded into GarageBand and with a little help from my son, I had the MP3 edited and posted on the web server. Just another example of how Apple makes a simple task simple instead of over complicating and making it way too difficult.

Streaming Audio with MP3

Today was MP3 streaming audio day. I had the task of copying 2 conference audio CDs to a remote web server and then add access to them thru a streaming audio server. Besides waiting for the files to transfer, most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to get the files to stream. I tried the simple approach of having links to the MP3 files, but that forced a download of the file. Then after many googlizer searches, I finally found the help I needed in a custom Flash audio player at boutell.com. I like the allowed customization as I created a playlist type XML file for each CD and that was all there was too it - only 8 hours later!