Chris Knowlton's Blog

Hi Chris !

I have some questions:

1) We have to send a media stream from mobile camera (Sound + Video) to Windows Media Series. Does such a possibility exist?

2) Can we send this media stream without Encoder?

3) Is there a standart  protocol of transfer of data to Media Series?

4) Will anything appear in this direction with Media Series 9.5?

5) When will  Encoder Expression be able to send a stream to Media Series?

6) Recommend us, please, any specialist's blog that is engaged in streaming video and mixing.

thanks

Vladimir Leshchinsky

Nice post, Chris.  I'd note that the features you talk about with IIS7 Media Pack are specific to v1.0 release, planned to coincide with Windows 2008 / IIS7 RTM.  As you know, with subsequent releases of the Media Pack we plan to add more features over time...  I would also note that with the Media Pack option you get all the extensibility of IIS7, including managed pipeline extensibility for doing all kinds of custom modules for your media requests...

Hi, Vladimir, 

Thanks for your questions!  Here are my attempts at answers... 

1.       I'm not clear on what scenario you are trying to address with streaming from a mobile camera, so I'll answer this four ways...

a.       For broadcasting a live stream from your Windows Mobile phone, check out the very cool ComVu PocketCaster product.

b.      If you want to upload recorded video files from your mobile phone for on-demand streaming from within a blog, a great example of one way to do this is James Clarke’s Jetfuel plug-in, which combines short cell phone video clips with Windows Live Writer, Expression Encoder, and the free SilverLight Streaming service.

c.       To stream an event from a remote location that has network access to your Windows Media server, you can set up an appropriate camera, connect it to a video capture card on a PC running Windows Media Encoder or Expression Encoder, configure the encoder, and then use pull or push encoding to stream the content to your server for distribution.

d.      A number of Windows Media partners provide all-in-one encoding and serving appliances that might be of interest to you.  Here are a few recent examples:

1.       Featured Microsoft Partners at NAB 2007

2.       VBrick’s WM Appliance 

2.       For a camera that encodes directly into the Windows Media format, Wilife makes Windows Media-based security cameras.  If you also need audio, you might contact them to inquire about their plans for audio capabilities.

3.       The standard protocol for transferring a Windows Media stream from an encoder (such as Windows Media Encoder or Expression Encoder) to Windows Media Services is HTTP.  When sourcing from an upstream Windows Media server, you can use either HTTP or RTSP.

4.       Windows Media Services for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 both support sourcing from remote locations.

5.       The Live Encoder features of Expression Encoder will be included in the upcoming RTM, slated to release concurrently with Silverlight in Summer, 2007 (so, depending on your definition of Summer, this might happen either tomorrow, or by September 22  J ).

6.       For a summary of great Windows Media VC-1 encoding resources, such as a link to encoding guru Ben Waggoner’s blog, see James Clarke’s blog post on Hidden secrets of VC-1 Quality. 

I hope this helps!  If you need clarification or more information, please write back with more questions. 

-Chris

Hi, Chris

thanks for nice post.

we have some problem implementing Windows media server

1. our environment

  OS: windows 2003 Standard Edition(Media Server9)

  Reverse Proxy Server : IBM webseal 4.1 (Tivoli Access Manager)

2. Business needs

  our customer need to stream through reverse proxy server

3. Our Problem

  we configured windows media server as webseal (reverse  

  proxy server) backend web server and we tried to stream contents using  http://webseal_ip/JCT/a.wmv

  but, it failed

4. Cause of failure

  first http request arrived media server through reverse proxy server

  but, media server returned a.wvx containing URL with

  it's real IP address and DNS name.

  after client received that meta file, it try to connect not through reverse proxy but media server directly

5. Question

 1) Do We need another configuration in media server ?

 2) We Tested Web server streaming  in reverse proxy environment and it works well

     but, this senario, wmplayer takes too much memory

    (to stream 80MB wmv, it allocates about 120MB RAM)

    what we can do ?

thanks for reading poor english

RYU GUN WOO

Hi, Ryu Gun Woo,

I'm not clear on where the .wvx is coming from - typically, that is served from a Web server.  If so, then the authoring of those playlists needs to be changed to point at the Webseal server.  

If the problem is that the Windows Media Server itself is responding with the origin server IP address, I see two possible solutions:

1) Check to see if the Webseal has a configuration setting to rewrite the streaming media URL.  For instance, Blue Coat appliances have an asx-rewrite function that will correct this issue, so perhaps Webseal has something similar.

2) Replace the Webseal server with another Windows Media server running on Windows Server 2008.  This comes with Reverse Proxy support in the built-in Cache/Proxy plug-in, allowing you to point to an upstream origin server easily from the UI.

I hope this helps.

-Chris

Thanks Chris...

We solved problems...but we don't know what was the exact cause of problem.

first...if we use URL like webseal_ip/.../publish_point

, WMS returns a.wvx like meta file. (if the player doesnot support wvx file extenstion, it creates popup windows(download or execute))

As you mentioned, webseal rewrites the streaming media URL.

but there was one strange thing.

WMS gives Webseal that http response as http version 1.0, but Webseal gives player that response  as  http version 1.1.

I think the player cannot understand that respose and retry...

and fail

second..we use URL like mms://webseal_ip/jct/publish_point

it works well through http protocol.

(webseal cannot handle mms or rtsp protocol, so client failed

connect by that protocol and finally success http protocol.

the difference first and second is...

In fisrt method...the user-agent(http spec) was NSPLAYER WMFSDK (i think this is IE media player plug-in)

and returns wvx meta info and use http 1.0

the second method, the user-agent was just NSPLAY with

auth infomation and dose not return wvx and use http 1.1

I suspect the problem was....webseal changed backend webserver's response from version1.0 to version1.1

and using http:// invoke IE plug-in

thanks a lot

I'm glad you were able to find a solution!  :-)

-Chris

Chris Knowlton wrote this blog post earlier this year comparing web servers to streaming media servers

Pingback from  Comparing Web servers to streaming media servers | DavideZordan.net

Hey Chris,

When you say "Ability to deliver a broad range of media formats", can you elaborate on that?  Adobe just dropped the price of their Flash Media Server to $995/server for the "professional" version.  Will the Media Pack have any benefit in the delivering of Flash?

Thanks,

Colin

We deliver wmv files from Windows Media Server on Windows 2003 Enterprise server configured to support http on port 80.

This has woked fine. Response is snappy and dragging the timeline on a long video (some up to five hours) is almost instant in Windows Media Player..

Recently we moved to Silverlight for presentation. Soem nice features and we want to stay with Silverlight. However, video viewed in Silverlight takes long to buffer when sliding the video timeline control.

Why is this, and is there anyway to make silverlight as snappy as media player when delivering from the WMS?

We deliver wmv files from Windows Media Server on Windows 2003 Enterprise server configured to support http on port 80.

This has woked fine. Response is snappy and dragging the timeline on a long video (some up to five hours) is almost instant in Windows Media Player..

Recently we moved to Silverlight for presentation. Soem nice features and we want to stay with Silverlight. However, video viewed in Silverlight takes long to buffer when sliding the video timeline control.

Why is this, and is there anyway to make silverlight as snappy as media player when delivering from the WMS?

Hi, Colin,

Thanks for your great question.  By "Ability to deliver a broad range of formats," I mean a few things.  First, I'm broadly referring to the fact that an HTTP progressive download from IIS can include any media file format, including Flash .flv files.  

Second, thinking more specifically about the new IIS Media Pack, the Bit Rate Throttling feature provides advanced support of audio/video media formats. This includes automatic detection of the encoded bit rate in a file, and intelligent progressive download throttling based on that. Built-in support is included for digital media with the following file name extensions:  .asf, .avi, .flv, .m4v, .mov, .mp3, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .wma, .wmv.  The advantage of this feature is that it allows you to get most of the bandwidth cost savings and scalability increases traditionally associated with a streaming media server, such as Windows Media Services 2008.

Third, going beyond media files, the Bit Rate Throttling feature allows any file type, media or non-media, to be throttled at a constant rate. An administrator can easily specify a new file type and throttling settings through the user interface.

With regards to pricing, you can now get both the IIS Media Pack and Windows Media Services 2008 as free downloads.  Both will install on all versions of Windows Server 2008, including the affordably-priced Windows Web Server 2008, which has a retail price of $469.  

-Chris

Bit Rate Throttling, the first feature in the upcoming IIS7 Media Pack, is now available for download

Chris, I am running Windows Small Business Server 2003 and had a question about Windows Media Services.  I can connect to my WMS using RSTP locally, but when I try to access it from my external IP address it fails.  This worked up until I ran the Internet and E-mail configuration tool under Server Management.  Do you have any suggestions?  I know that port 554 is open on my router, so I am sure it's not anything to do with that.

Thanks,

Charles

Joe, you should see snappy response times in newer builds of Silverlight.  Some customers are reporting up to 50% faster response compared to Windows Media Player.   If not, please send me e-mail using the Contact link above so we can dig into the details.

-Chris

Wenn Sie eine beliebige Version von Windows Server 2008 haben (ausser den Itanium-basierten Systemen),