Chris Knowlton's Blog
News, comments, and information on digital media capture, delivery, and management using Microsoft Media Platform technologies.
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Encoding Workshop: Best Practices and Strategies
On Thursday, September 16, StreamingMedia.com is sponsoring an online workshop on Encoding Best Practices and Strategies that will include Allan Poore from the Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Pro team. Delivery technologies such as IIS Smooth Streaming really improve the playback experience, but they assume that you start with high-quality video. The focus of the workshop will be a discussion on the latest tips, tricks, and technologies for making your video look the best it can.
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IIS Smooth Streaming highlighted at IBC
IIS Smooth Streaming, part of IIS Media Services, is one of the unifying themes in the "Digital Marketing & Experiences" section of the Microsoft exhibit at IBC this year. Held each September at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam, IBC is billed as "the premier annual conference and exhibition for professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of entertainment and media content worldwide." Over 1,300 companies exhibit at the show, and over 45,000 attendees are expected during the event, which runs September 9th – 14th.
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Silverlight and Premium Media Experiences
Given the speed at which web technologies seem to be evolving, partners and customers often ask about the roadmap for Silverlight, with many of those conversations centered around premium media experiences. Brad Becker, Director of Product Management, Developer Platforms, has written a blog post on The Future of Silverlight which addresses this and many other questions about Silverlight.
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Bit Rate Throttling and Smooth Streaming - Part 2
This is Part 2 of a post on IIS Bit Rate Throttling and IIS Smooth Streaming. In Part 1, I provided a high-level overview of why Bit Rate Throttling and Smooth Streaming would never normally be applied to the same content, and then elaborated more on Bit Rate Throttling. In this part, I'll focus more on Smooth Streaming, including the way it self-meters the amount of data delivered to clients.
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Bit Rate Throttling and Smooth Streaming - Part 1
As more and more people evaluate the features in IIS Media Services, I occasionally get questions about how to use IIS Bit Rate Throttling with IIS Smooth Streaming. In reality, these features work on separate types of content. While they can run at the same time on a server, you would never typically use them on the same files. Both features achieve a metered flow of content, but one regulates the flow using delivery logic on the server, while the other regulates the flow using request logic on the client.
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Live Beach Volleyball brought to you by Ooyala, IIS, and Silverlight
The AVP Nivea Tour Hermosa Beach Open volleyball tournament is being broadcast today with a new Microsoft Silverlight player by Ooyala. As with past AVP events, this tournament is again being delivered using IIS Smooth Streaming. The new Ooyala player, pictured below, includes four live streams that you can switch between instantly. Check out the tournament, the player, and the Smooth Streaming experience at http://bit.ly/avpTV.
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Upcoming Webcast on IIS Media Services
Please join me for an interactive webcast that provides an overview of current and upcoming features in IIS Media Services. You can join in the live session or view it on-demand. Here is the official abstract…
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Live Smooth Streaming infrastructure and advertising for the 2010 Olympics
Microsoft and its partners provided an infrastructure that helped to provide NBC, the Canadian television company (CTV), and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) with streaming content of the 2010 Winter Olympics. A new article titled NBC Online Video Monetization and Highlights Creation for the 2010 Winter Olympics describes the general IT architecture and tools used to support these three broadcasters, and offers specific details about how NBC inserted midstream ads in both the live video and video-on-demand (VOD) scenarios and created and delivered highlight clips.
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IIS Media Services 4.0 Beta is now available
The IIS Media team has been plugging away for many months at new server and client technologies, and we are ready to start sharing some of them today! The Beta of IIS Media Services 4.0, which allows you to encode once and deliver to three screens across multiple file formats and protocols, is now available for download and testing.
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Expression Encoder 4, just released, supports IIS Live Smooth Streaming