VLC Won't Directly Stream Internet .mp3 Files

[RetiredEngineer]

Hi.

I'm a VLC newbie, and run Windows 7x64 with MS Outlook 2007 and IE9.

In Outlook 2007 I have a list of audio RSS feeds which I had to click only once to open Windows Media Player in .mp3 streaming mode. But the sound was not loud enough to listen to newscasts. So I associated .mp3 files with my newly installed vlc-1.1.11-win32.exe application. This gives me all the sound boost I need, but I can't get the VLC settings correct, as right-click on the news feed's .mp3 web address puts me into the View Downloads box while the .mp3 file is downloaded to disk. When I click Open on the fresh download, VLC sends me to the VLC media player 1.1.11 Setup box with the message, "VLC media player has already been installed. Do you want to remove the previous version before installing VLC media player 1.1.11?" No joy, as I had just installed VLC 1.1.11.

I believe in supporting products which embody good work, and Videolan will get my US$7.00 (or more) if anyone can tell me how to configure VLC and Outlook so I once again can enjoy one-click .mp3 news streams, but with elevated sound levels from VLC streaming (I do not need to download the newscasts).

Kind regards,
Retired Engineer

[VLC_help]

That association is wrong. It seem for some reason .MP3 files are associated to VLC installer (vlc-1.1.11-win32.exe or similar), not to the vlc.exe

[RetiredEngineer]

Thanks for your observation. I associated .MP3 with vlc.exe and everything now works, though not as rapidly as with Windows Media Player, as VLC first downloads the entire .MP3 file before it starts playing it. For me this can be a long wait, as I use a DSL Internet connection.

Is there a VLC setting which will create a short buffer and begin playing audio while simultaneously downloading the remainder of the .MP3 file? Or maybe one which just plays the audio in real time (Windows Media Player appears to do this). Perhaps the instructions I need are in a Help page I've not found yet. Can you point me to it?

Kind regards,
Retired Engineer

[VLC_help]

That is the behavior of Outlook. If you can override it to paste the URL to VLC, it would work.

[RetiredEngineer]

I can easily copy/paste .MP3 and .MP4v URLs one-at-a-time into "vlc.exe > Open Media > Network" in the URL text box, and both audio and video work splendidly.

Is there a way to create a file of URLs which vlc.exe can just "read" so I don't have to keep pasting them one-by-one as each preceding .MP3/.MP4v file completes?

Once again, a reference to a URL How-To on this topic would be greatly appreciated. If VideoLan is "working on this capability," I would be happy to contribute to it.

Kind regards,
RetiredEngineer

[VLC_help]

You can just paste URLs to a text file (one URL per line) and name it as .m3u

VLC supports .m3u playlists