Icecast + VLC Installation and Configuration Guide

Making VLC work with IceCast is not hard but there are some minor settings that were not obvious to me and I spent some time to figure them out.

IceCast

First, download and install IceCast. That's pretty much a next next next installation. When done start the IceCast Server.

Now, if you open this address with a browser, you can see that the server is running.

Eventually, you may want to edit the IceCast configuration to customize the port, the number of streams and the passwords. (Configuration -> Edit Configration).

VLC

I have VLC Media Player 2.0.8 Installed. I am going to stream some mp3 files to IceCast.

First, I have to enable MP3 streaming at the IceCast Output plugin module.

In VLC, go to Preferences (Enable advanced settings) -> Stream Output -> Access Output -> Shoutcast and check Stream MP3. On this page you can also set the name of the radio station, genre and other details.

Now, let's add the mp3 files for streaming:

• In VLC go to Media -> Stream
• Add the mp3 files
• Click Stream

• Click Next

• Select IceCast from the dropdown and click Add

• I'll enter localhost for the address since both VLC and IceCast are on the same machine. Otherwise I would enter the IP Address of the computer running IceCast.
• I'll enter radio1 for the mount point. It is highly recommended to specify a mount point, I couldn't make this working without entering one.
• source:hackme is the Login:pass combo in my case because I did not change the default password in the configration file. You should do that. The login is always "source".
• I won't activate transcoding since my files are already in mp3 format.
• Click Stream

Now I can see that the music is "playing" in VLC.

For the proof of concept, I will open this stream on a different computer with foobar2000. Note the /radio1 at the end of the URL, this is the mount point.

Notes

When everything is running, opening the Stream URL in the browser will bring up the IceCast status & admin page with some useful info. The default admin credentials are admin / hackme.

Additional resources

IceCast Official Documentation - http://www.icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.3.3/