GINI - straming media server
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version 0.5, 2003-01.


GINI is a server for broadcasting audio and video files. If you know
Icecast or Shoutcast then you should be familiar with GINI too.
GINI currently supports Ogg Vorbis, MP3, RIFF AVI, QuickTime, ASF/WMV
and RealMedia format files. Please note that QuickTime and RealMedia
feeding is working, but the stream currently is not playable. Very useful. ;)

IMPORTANT: do not run GINI as a privileged user!

GINI is very lightweight, it has a single process modell and it handles
memory very efficiently. It makes GINI an ideal broadcasting solution for
low end machines. For example serving an 56kbps mp3 stream needs about
440K of memory (with shared memory).

GINI comes with GINIfeed, a feeder application what you should use to stream
your files into GINI. It is like shout for Icecast, you don't need a soundcard
for broadcasting. You should use GINIfeed to feed you Icecast server too, or
you should use shout to feed GINI if you want (of course using a compatible
fileformat). GINIfeed also supports stream relaying when you feed your
server with a stream from an another server.

There is a remote console application called GINIcon you should use for
administration of your GINI servers.

Video support is very new at the moment, it is very important to use healthy,
unbroken files for streaming. Also consider using videos with nearly the same
bitrate if you want to broadcast more files.
Currently you should experience picture artifacts when the playback starts,
they go away with the first keyframe received by the playback software.
Video playback tested only with MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/), please
inform me if you have success or failure with other players.
Set the input buffer at least to 2048K with "-cache 2048" if you want to
enjoy a stream.
It seems that MPlayer doesn't play videos continously from streams. If
the player stops playback simply reconnect.

GINI is under active development so if you experience problems during 
using it please send your feedback to <monsta@users.sourceforge.net>.

For more information on GINI please take a look at the manual pages
or visit http://gini.sf.net/.

Thank you for using GINI.
