RE: <OT>Re: Choppy playback

Howdy,

Just in case anybody is not aware.... You don't actually need to use the
MP3DefaultOperation directive at all. If omitted, you get a built-in default
to 'play', and that is fine for most people. In fact, I have seen more
problems created by people using the MP3DefaultOperation directive. 

There is a few reasons the directive exist, but not for what many folks use
it for. Before I go further, let me explain that two programs are used with
mod_mp3: web browsers, and mp3 decoders. The two programs present themselves
different to Apache/Mod_mp3 when building the initial http connection. I'm
referring to the USER-AGENT tag the client program sends to the http server.
WinAMP, for example, does not contain the word 'mozila' anywhere in the
header it sends to Apache, where the Mozila web browser (IE too) does.
Another difference is the mp3 player, XMMS for example, expects the initial
http request phase to be followed by a stream of audio/mpeg data(or .pls, or
.m3u); where a web browser expects to see anything from plain-text to html.
This is all dependent on mime types. Anyways... The reason the default
operation exist is because you can make mod_mp3 output both text/html or
audio depending on what you want to do. The bad part is that mod_mp3 is
stupid (no offence krow), and doesn't know the difference between the
USER-AGENT's. So that is why Krow (aka Brian Aker) created the default
operation thingy, mainly for interface developers I'd say. 

If you attempt to connect XMMS to mod_mp3 when using the MP3DefaultOperation
set to 'select', you will have problems because mod_mp3 is now sending
text/html to the mp3 decoder by default. Sending text data thru an mp3
decoder obviously doesn't work. On the flip side, if you are using Netscape
browser (or IE), and your browser is not aware of what program to pass off
audio/mpeg data to(aka Winamp, xmms), it will simply do nothing, or try to
fall back on plain text. This is a problem for Netscape users, since
Netscape doesn't ship with any mp3 decoders** (Unix only), it cannot make
assumptions that there is any media player installed to handle the audio
data. You have to set this up manually in the Netscape preferences. On IE,
you actually have to mess with the Operating system mime table so all apps
know who to send mp3 data to, or IE will just download the data, and ask you
to save; totally oblivious to the installed mp3 decoder.

The moral of the story: don't use directives your not going to need, and
setup your browser so they know to properly handle audio/mpeg data.

So now you all know... And knowing stuff is good! ;)

Enjoy,
-Jon Disnard
http://www.audiodevil.org



** Windows version ships with winamp.


-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Wunder [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 06:31
To: [email protected]
Subject: <OT>Re: [Mod_mp3] Choppy playback


Hmmm...
At home, reading your messages with KMail, it's black on white. At work, 
reading your messages with Mozilla 1.0+, it's black on blue. I wonder if
it's 
a bug in Mozilla?

On Thursday 06 June 2002 05:21 pm, David Cotton wrote:
> Thats odd Tim.  When I send my email it's black on white.  Never had 
> that problem before.  Glad I could be of help though.
>
> David
>
> Tim Wunder wrote:
> > On 6/6/2002 4:04 PM, someone claiming to be satchel loftis wrote:
> > > on Thursday 06 June 2002 10:48, you wrote:
> > >>Now that I've finally gotten mod_mp3 to stream files ...
> > >
> > > hey tim,
> > >
> > > what did you do differently to make them stream instead of 
> > > download?
> >
> > Hi satchel,
> >
> > Since I use MP3DefaultOperation select, I get a list of MP3s to 
> > select from. At the bottom of the list are several options, the 
> > default was Play, I changed that to M3U (Version 1) and all was 
> > beautiful. Many thanks to David Cotton, who responded off list (and 
> > who I wish would choose a different background/forground for his 
> > mails -- black text on blue background is hard on my old eyes :-( ).
> >
> > HTH,
> > Tim
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Mod_mp3 mailing list
> > [email protected] 
> > http://lists.tangent.org/mailman/listinfo/mod_mp3
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