I have a client that wants to use a PC to run some low background music at a retail outlet. This has been tested and audio quality and volume is more than adequate. Now the tricky part, the client wants to update/change this music without having to login to each individual workstation and change playlists/files. Is there a client that can check a location for an updated file? Or possible upload to the clients via FTP? Or maybe i'm way off the mark and theres a much easier way to do it.

Any ideas much appreciated.

I can't offer a specific solution but if you wanted to upload via FTP from the command-line from say a batch file, you can use wput:

http://wput.sourceforge.net/

The problem is that the music software on the other end might have a read-lock on the file, preventing you from over-writing it. If you can name the specific audio player in use, a plugin or something could be found.

shoutcast server on one pc, stick winamp on all the others. you just play whatever you want on the server pc and the others will play it

thanks for the reply, i thought the exact same about the locked file. i tested the audio at the store just ing media player/winamp, either are fine. i wasnt aware of plugins that oferred this sort of functionality. any names?

I'd agree with the shoutcast option as mentioned above.

you could also use windows media encoder/media server if you have win2k3 server on a pc somewhere

groovy, client runnin win2k3 sbs so both are an option. one last question, will either win media server or shoutcast offer caching? Reason being is most of the time the content will not have changed so it would be silly to constatnly stream/download it. The client will only make changes 1 a month and being on a low usage data plan, streaming may use up a bit.

is the sbs server in the same office as the workstations?

have they paid for a licence for the music?

na different offices, audio is actually more advertisement, not in store radio/songs, licensing not an issue.

I believe windows media 9/10 offer some kind of cache thing so if you just make it play one giant song on repeat rather than lots of little songs it may possibly stream it to the player and then simply repeat it from the cached copy however that might only work if you leave the player going 24/7. I'm not really 100% sure either way.

If you wanted to do it through local files you could always use task scheduler to stop the media player, unlocking any files it may have a hold on, upload the new content to each machine through a batch file and then restart the media players at say midnight or early one morning before anyone is in to listen to the music.

maybe you could just loop a playlist, and then replace the files in the playlist remotely...

maybe you could just loop a playlist, and then replace the files in the playlist remotely...

You seem to have missed the part in this thread where "read-lock" was discussed.

read lock is easy to get around, just have 2 of the same item in the playlist as song1 and song2.

update song2 when song1 is playing, then update song1 when song2 is playing, since you know the length of the songs, it won't be hard to figure out how long you have to wait after updating one to update the other.

last edited by ara at 00:23:01 23/Oct/06

That could work.

Just need to write a good batch-file/python-script.

it would be easy to setup.

you have a playlist with 10 items in it

song1 to song10

you write a batch file that runs every 30 minutes or so that copys newad.mp3 to song1 to song 10

each time it runs you are going to miss the song that is playing, but next time it runs you have a 90% chance of over writing that one.

if the add is greater then 3minutes long that isn't a problem, if it isn't increase the amount of copies.