Tutorial - Using Icecast and Butt to do a live audio stream

[Mitch]

This is for windows users, I already made a mac tutorial using nicecast, this will be using icecast and butt to broadcast on win.

Here is Icecast Tutorial

NOTE - This tutorial is for audio streaming only, if you want to do a video stream, check out Livestream (www.livestream.com)

1.

-Download program from icecast website (Choose Windows Setup version) - http://www.icecast.org/

- Open the file and install the program, leaving all options as default

-Download and install Butt (Broadcast Using This Tool) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/

(just click the link next to ‘looking for latest version?’)

2.

Set up a static IP on your PC

Windows Vista/7

-Start Menu

-Type ‘CMD’ into search bar and press enter

-Type ‘ipconfig’ and press enter

-A list of connections your computer has will appear. Find the connection your computer is using (generally Ethernet or wireless) and that is the details we will need. We will need the IPv4 address, Subnet mask, and default gateway. Minimise that window but keep it open, as we will use those details in a minute.

-Open Start Menu

-Control Panel -> Network & Internet -> Network and Sharing Center

-Click Wireless Network Connection (‘yournetworknamehere’)

- Click Properties

-Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP v4) Then Click Properties

-Click use the following IP Address, then enter the details that you got from the IPconfig screen *NOTE* if you go to connect to somebody else’s network, you will need to change this back to ‘Obtain an IP address automatically’. Important to remember that, especially if you take your laptop to uni/work etc. Then when you want to stream again you will need to back and re enter these settings, so write them down when you enter them

-Click OK -> Close -> Close

Your computer now has a static IP

Win Xp Coming Soon (Still have to find a computer with it installed around the house). The basics are the same for xp though, should be able to figure it out. If anyone has trouble i'll add xp part in

3. Open ports on router.

For this you will need to know your router model. You will find the model number on the router box somewhere

Go to http://portforward.com/

-A list of routers will appear. Find your router

-Skip the advertisements

-A list of programs will appear. Click Icecast.

-A Page will then appear with detailed instructions and screenshots of how to open the ports you need

NOTE – Believe it or not, Internet Explorer (shudder) or Firefox are probably the best browsers to use to do this, some routers have dodgy config pages that don’t work with all browsers. If you are having trouble loading router pages properly, applying changes etc. this could be your problem. Try a different browser first.

Unblock Icecast2Win.exe and port 8000 on your firewall *NOTE* if you don’t know how to do this you will need to look up specific instructions for the firewall you use, whether that be windows firewall or a 3rd party firewall.

4. Configure Icecast

-Go to your desktop and open nicecast

-Go to Configuration -> edit configuration

-There is 3 passwords to be changed: source-password, relay-password, and admin-password. By default they are all ‘hackme’ so change them to something different.

5. configure Butt

-open Butt

-Click Settings

On Main Tab

-Select audio device (usually line in. This could be on built in soundcard or Traktor card line in depending on setup

-Click add server

--Choose icecast

-Give the stream a name. This isn’t the name that everybody sees so it doesn’t matter what you call it

-address = localhost

-port = 8000

-Passord = password you set in icecast earlier

-mountpoint = can call it whatever you like. I just called mine ‘stream’ as it’s nice and simple

-click save

Click add stream info

-Add in any info you want

Click Save

Click save settings

Go to stream tab

-Choose your audio quality (what you set it at depends on connection. Mine Is fairly slow, so I have it set on 64kb. A lot of you could choose higher though (depending on connection speed)

-Select mono or stereo

-Select mp3 for broadcast codec

-Go to record tab and set your record settings if you want butt to record your live stream

Go back to main tab and click save settings

6. Initiate stream

-open icecast and click start server. It should go green and say it’s running like below pic

-open butt and click the play button (also hit record if your using it to record the set). It should connect and look like below. If it says it can’t connect it will usually give you an error. It’s likely you either typed password wrong, one of the other server settings, or icecast isn’t started up, so check those things first.

-open web browser and google ‘whats my ip’

This will be used to determine your stream link, along with your mountpoint.

As in pic, my IP is 121.216.xxx.xx and my mountpoint set was ‘stream’, so the link to my stream would be ‘http://121.216.xxx.xx:8000/stream’

Change that link to suit your IP and mountpoint

You should be right to go!

you can test your setup is working properly internally, open web broswer and type http://localhost:8000/stream, replacing stream with whatever you set your mountpoint as in butt. If it is working internally but not externally, try disabling your firewall and see if that fixes the issue. If it does, you havent configured your firewall properly, so go back and check that.

Hope this helps y'all

[Mitch]

Note: On the step you enter in your static Ip, aka at this screen:

You may also need to put in your dns servers.

they can be found by typing ipconfig /all into the command prompt, or if you can't find them there, you can google them. AKA Tesltra DNS servers, Optus DNS servers etc.