Chris Knowlton's Blog : Media Pack

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

Microsoft at NAB

chriskno — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:07:00 GMT

A number of us from Microsoft will be meeting with customers and staffing the booth at the NAB Show again this year, including folks who work on Windows Media Services 2008, IIS 7.0 Media Pack, Silverlight 2, Expression Studio 2, Interactive Media Manager, Windows HPC Server 2008, Windows Media Center, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, and Microsoft Mediaroom, among others. We will also have many partners joining us to demonstrate their value-added solutions for Microsoft media technologies, including integrated support for Windows Media and the SMPTE standard VC-1 codec.

NAB2008 is the most comprehensive showcase of electronic media in the world, bringing together over 1,400 exhibiting companies and more than 105,000 attendees from 130 countries, making it "Electronic Media's Essential Destination."

Microsoft will have an even larger presence at NAB2008, with an expanded exhibit space in the South Hall. Our exhibit will highlight Microsoft’s broad range of offerings targeting the media & entertainment industry, and will illustrate how Microsoft is enabling organizations and individuals to create, manage and experience rich media content.

You can find us in booth SL5520 in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. For more information, see www.microsoft.com/media/nab2008, and check out these blog posts from some of my colleagues to find out which technologies and show events they recommend:

Ben Waggoner: http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/21804/
Juanjo Carmena Ayuso: http://blogs.msdn.com/itmedios/archive/2008/04/10/la-presencia-de-microsoft-en-nab.aspx
Chris Carper: http://silverlightbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/silverlight-and-nab-2008.html

Please stop by if you are going to be at NAB! I'll be at a station with Jim Thill to demonstrate Windows Server 2008 and Silverlight.

-Chris

Exciting media announcements at MIX08

chriskno — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:27:00 GMT

There were many very cool announcements and demos during Scott Guthrie's portion of the MIX08 Day 1 Keynote, and media technologies related to Silverlight were key among them. One 15-minute segment on media included talking points on Windows Media Services 2008 (WMS), the IIS7 Media Pack, Bit Rate Throttling screen shots and client experience, and Web Playlists in an advertising demo.

Here are links to information on some of the media technologies mentioned in the keynote:

Release of the Silverlight 2 Beta, bringing the ease and power of the .NET framework to a cross-platform cross-browser plug-in
Move Networks integration with Silverlight, a great example of a company making use of new Adaptive Streaming capabilities in Silverlight 2
Expression Encoder 2 Beta, which accelerates encoding, improves video quality, and includes new Silverlight templates
IIS 7.0 Media Pack Bit Rate Throttling, which allows you to save money and increase scalability when delivering media from your Web server
IIS 7.0 Media Pack Web Playlists, which allow you to control and monetize your content
Windows Media Services 2008, which provides over 2x the scalability of WMS 9.0 and now runs on the affordable Windows Web Server 2008

Media serving breakout session highlights for MIX08:

Wednesday afternoon, March 5th

IIS and WMS media serving were a key component in a session by Ben Waggoner on Encoding Video for Microsoft Silverlight Delivery Scenarios
Web Playlists were featured during an in-depth breakout session on Silverlight and the Advertising Opportunity that got into the details of the keynote advertising demo

Thursday morning, March 6th, Ed Maia showed a great demo of the IIS Media Pack during his session on Integrating Media in Silverlight Applications
Friday morning, March 7th, Charles Finkelstein will mention IIS and WMS media serving in the Overview of Expression Encoder 2 session with James Clarke

IIS-specific sessions at MIX08 include the following:

Wednesday afternoon, March 5th, Robert Cameron and Tito Leverette presented Bringing Hosters and Developers Together with IIS7 (including demos of Bit Rate Throttling and Web Playlists)
Thursday morning, March 6th, Drew Robbins presented Partying with PHP on Microsoft Internet Information Services 7
Thursday afternoon, March 6th, Mai-lan Tomsen Bukovec presented Everything You Need to Know about Diagnostics and Debugging on Microsoft Internet Information Services 7

-Chris

Web Playlists, WMS 2008, and a new IIS Media Page

chriskno — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Today was a big day for IIS and WMS! As you may have seen among the many announcements, today we announced the launch of several media technologies:

..and the launch of IIS.NET 2.0, including a new IIS Media page.

Give us your feedback. :-)

Go Live (and save money) with Bit Rate Throttling!

chriskno — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:18:00 GMT

I am happy to announce that the latest version of Bit Rate Throttling, an Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Media Pack feature, is now available for download! This updated version adds additional controls to help an administrator ensure a reliable and consistent end-user experience, particularly when serving video content. For many scenarios, this feature will reduce bandwidth costs while increasing per-server capacity for concurrent download connections.

Bit Rate Throttling allows a Web administrator or site operator to:

Easily and automatically provide metered delivery of media and data downloads
Significantly reduce bandwidth costs for audio/video content that has high drop-off rates
Increase the number of concurrent users that can be supported per serverThis is a Go Live beta release, which means you can deploy this in live production environments. See http://www.iis.net/golive for details of the Go Live program.

Key features:

Automatically reads the encoded bit rate information from each defined media file type
Per-response bandwidth limiting on progressive downloads for every connection
Throttling rules are configurable at the server, site, virtual directory, and file levels
Fast Start experience for end users
Extensible to add support for other media and file formats
Fully integrated into the IIS7 administration and configuration models
NEW – Set default and maximum throttling rates, and concurrent connection limits

Click here for the 64 bit version; click here for the 32 bit version.

For more information, see the Bit Rate Throttling walkthroughs:

Bit Rate Throttling Setup Walkthrough. Describes how to download and install the Bit Rate Throttling module.
Bit Rate Throttling Configuration Walkthrough. Describes how to configure the Bit Rate Throttling module at the server, site, virtual directory, and file levels, including new Site-level limits.
Bit Rate Throttling Extensibility Walkthrough. Describes how to use the extensibility interface provided by the Rate Throttling module to add support for additional media file types.

-Chris

Call for input and feedback on media features

chriskno — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:26:00 GMT

We're getting some great off-line feedback on feature tweaks and additions for the new IIS7 Media Pack Bit Rate Throttling feature. Have you tried it out, but not yet submitted your feedback? Is there something you'd like to add or change? What other media features have you always wanted in your Web server? I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of these questions. You can reply publicly to this blog, or reply privately by clicking the Contact link on my blog page.

-Chris

Announcing the Bit Rate Throttling module Customer Technology Preview

chriskno — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:23:00 GMT

Bit Rate Throttling, the first feature in the upcoming IIS7 Media Pack, is now available for download at http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1522.

The IIS7 Bit Rate Throttling module was first announced at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show last April as part of the TCO advantage for Silverlight. It enables Web administrators to throttle the delivery of any file based on the file type, with additional functionality for digital audio/video files. Throttling can be set at the following levels within Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager: server, site, virtual directory, and file.

For audio and video files, this module automatically detects the encoded bit rate of the file, sends a short burst of data to the client at full throttle to ensure a fast start to their playback experience, and then delivers the content at a throttled rate that is equal to or slightly greater than the encoded bit rate. Several popular digital media file types are pre-defined in the module, and others can be added. Data files are throttled at a configurable constant rate.

The Bit Rate Throttling module includes the following key features:

· Integration with IIS 7.0. The Bit Rate Throttling module is tightly integrated with this new administration interface and configuration store in IIS 7.0. In addition, IIS 7.0 has a new administration tool, and the new Bit Rate Throttling module plugs seamlessly into that paradigm.

· Throttling for any file type. Any file type can be throttled at a constant rate. An administrator can easily specify a new file type and throttling settings through the user interface.

· Advanced media throttling. One of the most significant features in the new Bit Rate Throttling module is the 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, .mov, .mp3, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .wma, .wmv. An administrator can simply enable Bit Rate Throttling and start intelligently delivering these common media types using the default throttling settings.

· Extensibility. The new Bit Rate Throttling module supports developer extensibility, making it possible for software vendors and hobbyists to add support for additional media formats using simple XML editing. Microsoft is using this extensibility feature to implement the built-in media format support.

· Shared hosting support. By fully integrating into the IIS 7.0 pipeline and configuration model, the new Bit Rate Throttling module makes it possible to host Web page content and intelligently deliver a variety of media from the same Web server, site, or virtual directory. This level of granularity also provides the ability to isolate users through per-user virtual directories.

Bryan Fleming and Eric Woersching have both written about the Bit Rate Throttling value proposition provided by this module for folks who are hosting media content on Web servers. If you are wondering whether to deliver media content using IIS7 or Windows Media Services, please read my previous blog post.

We'd love to get your feedback on this module - please post a comment below, or join the discussion at the new IIS7 - Media forum.

-Chris

Comparing Web servers to streaming media servers

chriskno — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 07:13:00 GMT

I'm often asked by customers whether they should use Web servers or streaming media servers to deliver their content, especially now for new rich media sites rolling out Silverlight. The answer invariably depends on their business objectives. Each type of server offers pros and cons related to infrastructure, business model, administrative requirements, and end-user experience. This post will provide some information that might help when making this decision.

Two articles provide a good primer for such a discussion. The first is Web Server vs. Streaming Server, an older analysis that needs updating but provides great context. The second is the relatively more recent Streaming from a Web Server, which provides Web server how-to instructions and updates the comparison to streaming with Windows Media Services 9 Series.

Both articles basically make the case for using a streaming media server based on efficiency, quality, features, scalability, content protection, and protocol options. Many of the points made are still very valid, while others have diminished in relevance due to improvements in bandwidth and changes in technology. For instance, let's look specifically at IIS and Windows Media Services…

In many scenarios, HTTP streaming:
- Has proven to be very scalable in terms of concurrent connections on a Windows Media Services server
- Is increasingly effective for delivering high-quality end-user experiences as bandwidths to homes and branch offices increase
IIS 7 takes a giant step forward from IIS 6 and competing Web servers with the new IIS 7 Media Pack bandwidth throttling feature and Windows Server 2008 scalable networking capabilities, as it can:
- Make better use of resources on the server and delivers more concurrent data streams over HTTP when serving large files, such as video content
- Provide configurable functionality similar to Fast Start and Fast Cache in Windows Media Services
- Send media content at the encoded bit rate, or an administrator-defined rate, for popular formats such as Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video, and MP3
- Throttle other data types at administrator-defined rates

Given these changes and many others for Windows Server 2008, we might change the high-level "Comparing server features" table from the Web Server vs. Streaming Server article to look as follows…

Windows Server 2008 Feature	Windows Media Services	IIS 7 + Media Pack
Stream through most firewalls	X	X
Stream content with Digital Rights Management	X	X
Fast Streaming	X	~
Fast Start	X	X
Fast Cache	X	X
Fast Reconnect	X
Fast Recovery	X
Advanced Fast Start	X
Stream without downloading	X
Broadcast (live)	X
Intelligent streaming	X
Optimized for delivering Windows Media content	X	X
Indexing	X
Rich Windows Media client logging	X
Built-in Windows Media Cache/Proxy plug-in	X
Supported on Server Core installations	X	X
Available for Windows Web Server 2008	X	X
Stream content to cross-platform Silverlight clients	X	X
Delegated Administration		X
Centralized Configuration		X
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for on-demand streams		X
Ability to deliver a broad range of media formats		X

If you compare this to the original table, you'll notice that both IIS and Windows Media Services have some great new features that might affect your choice for delivering streaming media. Clearly, your decision will be based on your particular business requirements. Fortunately, with the new functionality provided by Windows Server 2008, your options for this decision have just increased.

After Windows Server 2008 launches, we'll provide updated versions of both Web Server vs. Streaming Server and Streaming from a Web Server. In the meantime, stay tuned to www.iis.net for more information on the delivery of streaming media, and let us know if you have any questions or topics that we can address.

-Chris