I'm the Mac tech support guy at the college. I don't have any direct
involvement with the WCNI stream other than I'm the back-up for the
server admin should there be a server problem when he's unavailable.
I've never actually used QTSS other than to restart it when the server
goes down. A friend of mine, a former station director at WCNI,
recently bought an Airport Express and was disappointed to discover
that even though the WCNI stream plays just fine in iTunes it doesn't
play via AirTunes to his Airport Express. This doesn't seem right to me
since, from what I've read, AirTunes can stream anything that iTunes
can play. However, after running out to buy an Express, I was able to
confirm that the WCNI stream does not play via AirTunes.
I did some research on the Apple support site, Google and in the
archives for this list and the streaming-server-users list and found
nothing that suggests there is any limitation in AirTunes regarding AAC
streams. So, I now suspect that there's something about the way the
WCNI streams are set up that is causing this problem. From what I've
been able to determine they are RTSP URLs in a QuickTime wrapper, with
a custom graphic of the station's logo. I'm told they are set up that
way a couple of years ago so that the link on the web page could be
coded to have the stream open in QuickTime Player since they weren't
sure whether there were any other clients that could play AAC streams
at that time. I've noticed that QuickTime Player can play both the .mov
files and the RTSP URL, but iTunes can only play the .mov files. I've
done some searching but I haven't been able to find any AAC streams
(not aacPlus) that will stream via AirTunes.
The server admin is on vacation for another week, so I'd like to try to
find the answer while he's gone so that we can hopefully fix this issue
quickly upon his return.
Questions:
1) Any ideas why the WCNI AAC streams don't play via AirTunes?
2) What are the different ways to serve an AAC stream via QTSS and what
are their benefits and limitations?
3) Is there a way to get an AAC stream that plays via AirTunes?
-Michael Dreimiller
Computer Support Technician
Connecticut College
439- 2093
