Chris Knowlton's Blog : IIS Media Pack

Smooth Streaming – What, Why, When, Where, and How

chriskno — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:48:00 GMT

Since we announced our new IIS Smooth Streaming extension last October with Akamai, we've been spending a lot of time engaging with very-interested customers and partners. In the course of these discussions, we hear a lot of frequently asked questions about Smooth Streaming, usually along these lines:

What is Smooth Streaming?
Can I use my existing Windows Media content with Smooth Streaming?
How is Smooth Streaming different from MBR [multiple-bit-rate] streaming?
Will Smooth Streaming work with Silverlight?
Is Smooth Streaming based on traditional streaming, or progressive download?
Does Smooth Streaming use proprietary streaming protocols?
Why is Microsoft shifting towards standards-based media delivery?
How do I create Smooth Streaming content?
Do I need to set up Windows Media Services to use Smooth Streaming?
What kind of support will Smooth Streaming have for H.264 content?
How does Smooth Streaming work?
Is Smooth Streaming more scalable than traditional streaming?
Are there cost advantages to using Smooth Streaming?

If you are wondering about the answers to any or all of these questions, then I highly recommend you read a new four-part Smooth Streaming blog series by Alex Zambelli, Microsoft technical evangelist. Topics include (in order):

A Brief History of Multi-Bitrate Streaming
The Birth of Smooth Streaming
Smooth Streaming Architecture
Encoding for Smooth Streaming (coming soon!)

If you haven't already done so, please check out the proof-of-concept Smooth Streaming site at SmoothHD.com.

-Chris

IIS Media Pack 1.0 Released

chriskno — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:19:29 GMT

Following up on our Smooth Streaming announcement last week, today we released IIS Media Pack 1.0! This first release of the IIS Media Pack features two IIS 7.0 extensions that focus on the intelligent delivery of video and audio to end users: Bit Rate Throttling, and Web Playlists.

Bit Rate Throttling

Bit Rate Throttling gives Web server administrators the ability to automatically meter the delivery of 11 built-in media file types, including Windows Media Video (.wmv), Flash Video (.flv), and MPEG-4 (.mp4) files. Additional media formats can be added, as can any non-media file type. By controlling how fast or how much data is downloaded to the client, site operators can see significant bandwidth cost savings for rich media content that has a high drop-off rate, such as videos on popular social media sites. When bandwidth is a concern, reducing the amount of data being sent to end users can increase the number of concurrent users per server.

Another feature of Bit Rate Throttling is dynamic throttling. When enabled, IIS can dynamically split your total available bandwidth allocation across all concurrent users. If you are billed for network usage based on a peak usage billing model, rather than number of datas transferred, this equitably shares extra available bandwidth among all of your users. As new users start to consume the extra bandwidth, dynamic throttling reduces bandwidth to each user, but ensures that the allocated bandwidth for each user will not fall below the specified bit rate for the content being consumed.

Web Playlists

Web Playlists let you deliver server-controlled media playlists from your Web server infrastructure, rather than using a dedicated streaming server. They enable you to control whether clients can Seek or Skip for each media asset, which lends itself very well to monetizing your content with pre-roll and in-stream ads. Web Playlists also obfuscate the location of media assets from the end user, and prevent client-side caching of those assets.

Web Playlists are simple to create and deliver. They are based on a standard playlist format (SMIL), are transformable to other common playlist types, and can be used with many popular media players. If you have existing business applications written in ASP, PHP, etc. to personalize the end user experience, it can be used with Web Playlists on your IIS 7.0 server to provide custom media playlists.

Call to Action

Download and try out the new IIS Media Pack 1.0 release! Add your comments below, or join us in the IIS Media forum, to let us know how well IIS Media Pack 1.0 meets your needs, and how we can make it even better for the next release.

Resources

IIS Media overview

Bit Rate Throttling details

Web Playlists details

IIS Media Pack downloads: 32-bit; 64-bit

Media delivery options in the Web Platform Installer

chriskno — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:18:24 GMT

Yesterday, we released the new Microsoft Web Application Installer, or Web AI, at www.microsoft.com/web. This tool for IIS7 allows you to simply install and get running with some of the most popular PHP and ASP.NET open source and community applications.

In case you missed it, we also released another tool on www.microsoft.com/web a few weeks ago: the Web Platform Installer (Web PI). Think of this, as Bill Staples put it, as "a one stop shop for downloading and installing the Microsoft Web Stack including IIS, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Visual Web Developer, all of the current IIS Extensions and more!" The IIS Media Pack features are among the IIS Extensions available in Web PI. If you use this tool, you will always get the latest production-ready versions of the IIS media features.

Here's the quickest way to find and install the IIS media features, using Web PI in five steps:

Launch Web PI: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9588072
Click on Run when prompted
After a moment, when the Web PI application appears, scroll down to the Media section
Check the features you want (see screenshot, below)
Click on Install and follow a few prompts

-Chris

Delivering audio and video media with Windows Web Server 2008

chriskno — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:28:00 GMT

Questions from customers on the floor of the NAB 2008 Show underscored again for me that many customers are interested in delivering digital media with Windows Web Server 2008. Why? Because for $469, you can get the power of IIS 7.0, the new IIS Media Pack, and Windows Media Services 2008 in a slimmed-down version of Windows Server 2008 to deliver media to the Internet. Whether you are a hoster building a Silverlight-enabled Web server farm, an enterprise administrator increasing your Web video capacity, or a small company putting up your first media server, Windows Web Server 2008 provides a great low-cost option for delivering your content.

-Chris