How I stream Stereo Mix through VLC into Squeezeserver

[ja2038]

I wanted to stream some audio books from audible around my place. I created a cygwin bash shell script that does this by using information from here, from the VideoLan forums, and from StackOverflow.

About a year ago, I tried something similar using the wavin plugin, and while I think it worked, it was really only usable on the squeezeserver itself, and this solution works for any VLC machine on the network with the squeezeserver.

So I use VLC to capture Stereo Mix and stream it as an http mp3 stream. I can then tune that stream in using Internet Radio from Squeezeserver.

Doing this seems to work well, but there is a 7-10 second lag from when the original audio plays and when you can hear it being served from squeezeserver.

The other problem I have with it, is that the sound level of the stream IS affected by the volume setting of the original PC. Ideally, I'd like to start a stream going and then mute that PC and have Squeezeserver get the full volume stream.

I also don't know if there isn't a better format to stream to squeezeserver than http mp3.

I generated the parameters in my script by playing with the VLC gui and cribbing from the working parameters it generated.

This is a cygwin bash script that works on Window 7 -- it assumes you have cygwin installed.

#!/bin/bash
/cygdrive/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/VideoLAN/VLC/vlc.exe --no-video --no-sout-video dshow:// :dshow-vdev=none :dshow-adev="Stereo Mix (Realtek High Defini" :dshow-caching=200 --sout "#transcode{vcodec=none,acodec=mp3,ab=128,channels =2,samplerate=44100}:http{dst=:8080/vlcstream.mp3}" :no-sout-rtp-sap :no-sout-standard-sap :ttl=1 :sout-keep

This streams "Windows Stereo Mix" onto http:/yourhost/8080/vlcstream.mp3". When run, a VLC window pops up with streaming started.

I can start this script with a double click from explorer or a shortcut by doing the following, which was taken from Stackoverflow.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1.../620913#620913

In a Windows cmd.exe window, type:

assoc .sh=bashscript
ftype bashscript=C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe bash -li -c 'cd "$(dirname "$(cygpath -u "%1")")"; bash "$(cygpath -u "%1")"'

This makes .sh scripts "run" which means bash executes them without creating a bash window.

So the end result is that a VLC window pops up, streaming Stereo Mix on :8080