Chris Knowlton's Blog : media

Webinar: How to Deliver True HD with Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming

chriskno — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:56:00 GMT

On Thursday, October 15th, we will be presenting a webinar entitled "How to Deliver True HD with Silverlight and Smooth Streaming." During the one-hour webinar, we'll cover the following topics...

What Smooth Streaming is and why it is the future of online video delivery
How Smooth Streaming delivers HDTV-quality experiences over HTTP
How it has been successfully implemented for major live events and on-demand content
The end-to-end steps for delivering your content with Smooth Streaming

IIS Smooth Streaming is part of the recently-released IIS Media Services 3.0, a set of extensions for Internet Information Services 7 (IIS) that provide an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform. Part of that release was the beta of the Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, which allows developers to easily create Smooth Streaming experiences using Silverlight.

I will be co-presenting with Jaime Miles from Level 3, with whom we worked on Smooth Streaming of many high-visibilty live events over the last five months. You can learn more about some of those events on our IIS Smooth Streaming Showcase.

To learn more and register for this free event, please visit the event information page on StreamingMedia.com. For those that cannon attend the live event, an on-demand version will be available from that page starting on Friday.

-Chris

IIS Media Services 3.0, including IIS Live Smooth Streaming, has been released

chriskno — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:31:00 GMT

What Just Happened?

We just released IIS Media Services 3.0, a set of extensions for Internet Information Services 7 (IIS) that provide an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform. This includes the new IIS Live Smooth Streaming and the separate IIS Advanced Logging package.

In addition, we released the beta of the Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, which allows developers to easily create Smooth Streaming experiences using Silverlight. Supported features include PlayReady, DVR controls, instant replay, slow motion, multiple camera angles, alternate audio tracks, content protection, ad integration, in-stream data feeds, and more.

Market Impact

Since April, 2009, key broadcasters around the world have used beta versions of IIS Media Services 3.0 to successfully broadcast some of the world's premier live events. These include the Tour de France and the Roland Garros 2009 International French Open Tennis Tournament on France Télévisions; the IAAF Athletics World Championships and FINA Swimming World Championships on both France Télévisions and RAI; the FIFA Confederations Cup South Africa 2009 on RAI; and Champions League Soccer on BSkyB; as well as events such as the Michael Jackson Memorial on Sympatico/MSN inMusic and SKY News. In a combined effort with Microsoft, NBC Sports and others, Wimbledon Live delivered more than 6,500 minutes of live and on-demand Smooth Streaming video via a high-definition (HD), interactive online video experience. Each Sunday this Fall, NBC and Microsoft are broadcasting Sunday Night Football on-line in HD, utilizing live DVR controls, multiple camera angles, slow motion, ad integration, analytics, and other cutting-edge features. 26 such trial deployments are currently highlighted on the Smooth Streaming Showcase.

Component Overview

With this release, the key elements of the IIS media server platform now include:

Smooth Streaming, adaptive streaming of media over HTTP
Live Smooth Streaming, for live adaptive streaming of broadcast events
Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, for creating custom clients
Bit Rate Throttling, meters the speed that media is delivered to a player
Web Playlists, secure sequencing of media content
Advanced Logging, with real-time client- and server-side logging
Application Request Routing (ARR), providing HTTP proxying and caching

Download the latest IIS Media offerings

You can download all of the IIS media server platform components using the Web Platform Installer button on the IIS Media page (http://www.iis.net/media).

Key new features:

See these blog posts to learn more about the key new features that are part of this release:

IIS Live Smooth Streaming: http://blogs.iis.net/jboch/archive/2009/10/09/rtw-of-live-smooth-streaming-is-now-live.aspx
IIS Advanced Logging: http://blogs.iis.net/vsood/archive/2009/10/12/iis-advanced-logging-1-0-released.aspx
IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit – Beta 1: http://blogs.iis.net/vsood/archive/2009/10/09/iis-smooth-streaming-player-development-kit-1-0-beta-1-released.aspx

Give the IIS Media server platform a try, and let us know what you think on our Forum.

-Chris

Smooth Streaming specifications now posted on-line

chriskno — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Smooth Streaming and Live Smooth Streaming, both part of IIS Media Services 3.0, have been generating a lot of interest from content owners who want to provide a seamless viewing experience up to 1080p for their end users. Even in the Beta stage of Live Smooth Streaming, there have been dozens of live trials at high-visibility events, such as the French Open and the FIFA Confederations Cup.

Today, we issued a press release highlighting this momentum and giving a preview of what we'll be demonstrating at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam later this week. To enable third parties who wish to build on IIS Smooth Streaming and the broader Microsoft media platform, we also released two specifications under the Community Promise Initiative:

The IIS Smooth Streaming Transport Protocol Specification describes how live and on-demand Smooth Streaming audio/video content is distributed and cached over an HTTP network.
The Protected Interoperable File Format (PIFF) specification defines a standard multimedia file format for delivery and playback of protected multimedia content, and is highly compatible with IIS Smooth Streaming Transport.

To learn more, see the press release: Microsoft Raises the Bar for Delivery of Live HD Online Video Using HTTP.

-Chris

Windows Media Services 2008 SP2

chriskno — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:55:00 GMT

New builds of Windows Media Services 2008 that are compatible with Windows Server 2008 Service Pack (SP) 2 are now available. These packages will install on Windows Server 2008 SP1, SP2, and future Windows Server 2008 service packs. Please visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ccf6312-723b-4577-be58-7caab2e1c5b7 to obtain the new builds.

Looking for information Windows Media Services 2008 R2? Please see http://blogs.iis.net/chriskno/archive/2009/06/16/windows-media-services-2008-r2-release-candidate.aspx.

The newest and easiest way to get started with either WMS 2008 or WMS 2008 R2 is by running Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 on your Windows Server. This user-friendly tool will download and then silently install WMS using the default settings.

-Chris

Windows Media Services 2008 R2 Release Candidate

chriskno — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Last week, we released an updated version of Windows Media Services (WMS) for Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate. Whether you are streaming content to Windows Media Player, Silverlight, or another Windows Media-compatible player, this latest release (WMS 2008 R2, for short) offers all of the great features you have come to expect in WMS, and more.

Here are some highlights of what WMS 2008 R2 provides:

More Options. Installs on all Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (6.1.7100) editions, including the following:
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation – new option for WMS!
- Windows Web Server 2008 R2
More Value. All unicast streaming features are now available on all versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 (see table, below).
Higher Reliability. Already-proven on-demand and live streaming reliability further improves in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Easier Deployment. Fewer installation packages makes deploying WMS simpler:
- One package for all editions of Windows Server 2008 R2
- Two packages for the WMS Remote Server Administration Tool (for use on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 clients)
Better Virtualization. Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008 R2 improves performance and manageability of streaming VMs.
Reduced Power Consumption. Windows Server 2008 R2 can dynamically adjust power usage as streaming loads change.
Multicast for Silverlight. With the new Silverlight Multicast Plug-in, WMS can now deliver multicast streams to Silverlight.

The easiest way to get started with WMS 2008 R2 is by running the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta on your Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate server. This very useful tool will download and then silently install WMS using the default settings.

Table 1 - Windows Media Services 2008 R2 Release Candidate features by edition

Feature	Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard and Foundation; Windows Web Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and Datacenter
Absolute Playlist Time
Advanced Fast Start
Advanced FF/RW
Advertising server support
Broadcast Auto-Start
Cache/Proxy Plug-in
Custom plug-in support
Event-based scripting support
Fast Cache
Fast Reconnect
Fast Recovery
Fast Start
Fast Streaming
Internet authentication method (Digest)
Internet Group Management Protocol version 3 (IGMPv3) support
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support
Intranet authentication methods (Negotiate authentication, Anonymous access)
Live Streaming
Multicast content delivery
Multiple authorization methods (NTFS ACL, IP Address)
Multiple control protocol support (HTTP, RTSP)
Multiple media parser support (Windows Media, MP3, JPEG)
Multiple playlist parser support (WSX, Directory)
On-Demand Streaming
Play While Archiving
Robust event notification (WMI, SNMP)
Server-based content repacketization
Server Core installation option
Unicast content delivery

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

Sourcing from a multicast broadcast using Windows Media Services

chriskno — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:15:00 GMT

A few folks have recently had questions about how to do sourcing of a video stream when using multicast with Windows Media Services (WMS). There are two basic scenarios that we often see:

Unicast edge server sourcing from a multicast broadcast on an origin server
Multicast edge server sourcing from a unicast broadcast on an origin server

In this post, I'll address the first scenario, a unicast edge server sourcing from a multicast broadcast on an origin server, as illustrated by the following diagram.

Multicast is often employed across an enterprise wide-area network (WAN) or content distribution network (CDN) to move broadcast content out to edge servers. Two examples of where this is useful are for distributing:

Executive broadcasts across a multicast-enabled WAN link to a remote enterprise LAN that is not multicast-enabled.
IPTV broadcasts across a CDN and then delivering the broadcasts to end users using public-facing edge servers.

The primary advantage of multicast is that no matter how many edge servers you have, you only have one video stream being distributed. In other words, even if you run a large CDN and have two thousand edge servers to which you need to distribute a 500kbps stream, your network will only need to support 500kbps. If you had to use two thousand unicast streams to reach those edge servers, some portions of your network would need to be able to support up to 1Gbps of streaming traffic (2,000 x 500kbps).

Let me describe how you would you set up this scenario when using WMS 9.0 or above. The following steps assume:

You have Windows Media Service 9 Series running on Windows Server 2003 servers and/or Windows Media Services 2008 running on Windows Server 2008 servers, and
Your network hardware (routers, etc.) between the Origin and Edge Servers is multicast-enabled.

Origin Server: Set up a multicast publishing point

First, we need to set up the Origin Server, from which the multicast originates, sourcing from a file, playlist, or live encoder.

On the Origin Server, right-click on Publishing Points in the console tree on the left side of the WMS user interface, as shown below.
Click on Add Publishing Point (Wizard)… to create a new publishing point with the following settings (click Next to move from one dialog box to the next):
- Name: A descriptive name (I'll call it GlobalMulticast in this example)
- Content Type: One file, for testing purposes. (Later, you can source from a live encoder running on a PC, such as the free Windows Media Encoder 9 Series or a free trial version of Microsoft Expression Encoder 2, hooked up to a Webcam or other video camera.)
- Publishing Point Type: Broadcast publishing point
- Delivery Options: Multicast; for testing purposes, leave the 'Enable unicast rollover' box unchecked
- File Location: Pick any lengthy Windows Media video (.wmv) file that you have
  - TIP: For testing purposes, you could also source from a WMS Server-Side Playlist that is set to loop
- Publishing Point Summary: Verify your selections
- Completing the Publishing Point Wizard: Leave the default choice of creating a .nsc file and click Finish
Multicast Announcement Wizard
- Click Next if you see the Welcome dialog
- Specify Files to Create: Select the second option, Multicast information file (.nsc)
- Stream Formats: Click the Add button
  - Add Stream Formats:
    - If sourcing from a file, click the Browse button
      - In the Windows Media Browse dialog box, change the Data Source and Location fields as needed to find your multicast source file
      - Click once on the file name to highlight it
      - Click the Select File button
    - If sourcing from an encoder, enter an HTTP path to it
    - Click OK
  - Click Next
- Multicast Logging: Leave the default No answer and click Next
- Save Multicast Announcement Files
  - For the edge servers that will be sourcing from the multicast, LAN users, you must save the NSC file at a location that can be accessed using an absolute path (e.g., \\server\directory\file.nsc - in this example, I made use of a shared 'media' directory and would specify \\mediapack1\media\GlobalMulticast.nsc)
  - For local LAN users, you can save the NSC file:
    - On a Web server (for example, if you are using the default Web site in IIS7 running on the Origin Server, enter a path such as c:\inetpub\wwwroot\file.nsc), or
    - On a server share (for example, \\server\directory\file.nsc)
  - Click Next
- Archive Content: Leave the default No answer and click Next
- Completing the Multicast Announcement Wizard: Click Finish
Ensure multicast streaming is enabled
- In the console tree, click the new broadcast publishing point (if the publishing point is started, click Stop)
- In the details pane, click the Properties tab
- In Category, click Multicast streaming
- In Plug-in, click WMS Multicast Data Writer, and then right-click – if Enable is not grayed out, click on it

Edge Server: Set up a unicast broadcast publishing point

Now, let's set up an edge server, which will receive the multicast stream and pass it on to end users via unicast streams.

On the edge server, right-click on Publishing Points in the WMS console tree
Click on Add Publishing Point (Advanced)… to create a new publishing point in the Add Publishing Point dialog box, with the following settings:
- Publishing Point Type: Broadcast
- Publishing Point Name: A descriptive name (I'll call it EdgeBroadcast in this example)
- Delivery Options: Multicast; for testing purposes, leave the 'Enable unicast rollover' box unchecked
- Location of content: We need to point at your Origin Server. Supply a path that is similar to the Content type example shown for a Multicast stream, mcast://\\server\directory\file.nsc. Using the Origin Server settings above, I would fill in mcast://\\mediapack1\media\GlobalMulticast.nsc (see image, below).
- Click OK
- Right-click on the new publishing point, and select the Start option (see image, below)
- To test that the unicast stream is working:
  - First use the Test Stream feature in WMS. Click once on your edge publishing point in the console tree, then in the details pane, select the Source tab. Click on the Windows Media Player icon at the bottom (circled in image below, on a WMS 2008 server).
  - Next, from a client PC, launch Windows Media Player and open (Ctrl + U) the unicast stream on the edge server, using a URL such as mms://server/publishingPoint. In my example, I would use mms://edgeserver1/EdgeBroadcast (URLs are not case-sensitive).

If all went well, you are now able to source from a multicast broadcast and re-distribute content using unicast streams from the edge.

Coming soon: I'll describe how to set up scenario #2, sourcing a multicast edge server from a unicast origin server.

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

Launch of Windows Media Services 2008

chriskno — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:22:00 GMT

Today I'm pleased to announce the launch of Windows Media Services 2008. Windows Media Services, like all of Windows Server 2008, is significantly more secure, reliable and robust - and it is already considered by many customers to be the best in the market for live and streaming delivery, and the latest improvements provide 2x scalability over Windows Media Services 9.0.

In addition to its proven scalability and reliability, Windows Media Services now supports a Server Core installation, enabling reduced footprints for fixed-function streaming server scenarios, offering embedded appliance-like performance. Additionally, a cache/proxy plug-in is built in, making it easier to configure WMS for edge network enterprise and Internet topologies. Many features of Windows Media Services that were previously available only on Windows Server Enterprise and Datacenter are now available on Windows Server Standard, and all Standard features are now also available on Windows Web Server 2008. This makes the power of Windows Media Services 2008 available to a broader set of users at a lower cost.

Key benefits of Windows Media Services (WMS) 2008 include:

Industrial Strength. Global Scale.

Proven Reliability. Windows Server 2008 improves on the five nines reliability of Windows Server 2003 to deliver a rock solid server platform that companies bet their businesses on.
Native 64-bit OS Support. Windows Media Services 2008 provides 2x the industry-leading scalability of WMS 9.0 thanks to native 64-bit operating system support and new networking technologies built into Windows Server 2008.
Scalable Live Streaming. The combination of massive scalability and proven reliability make Windows Media Services 2008 the right choice for delivering large-scale live events to a global audience.
Fast Streaming. Windows Media Services 2008 can deliver instant-on/always-on streaming for broadband users and dramatic improvements in the streaming experience for all users. Fast Start and the newer Advanced Fast Start for WMS significantly reduce streaming buffering times to deliver near-television-like experiences when playing back content or switching between sources. For on-demand content, Advanced Fast Start also enables quick seeking within a WMS stream, allowing users to "seek" forward or backward instantly.
New Cache/Proxy Server plug-in. Included with Windows Media Services 2008, this plug-in allows a Windows Media server in a branch office or other remote location to easily split a single broadcast stream from the home office into multiple streams for local end users, reducing WAN traffic. Similarly, the caching functionality caches on-demand content streamed to the remote location (e.g., training videos) the first time it is viewed, and subsequent requests for that content are served from the local cache/proxy server.

Monetize Content. Cut Costs.

Streaming for Windows Web Server 2008. With the launch of Windows Server 2008, Windows Media Services 2008 is now available for the very affordable Windows Web Server 2008, which has a suggested retail price of $469.
Advertising for Streaming Content. A variety of advertising types, including bumpers, trailers, and interstitial ads, can be dynamic and personalized via integration with ASP.NET servers, WMS server-side playlists (.WSX), and client side playlists (.ASX). Windows Media Services 2008 provides the advanced usage logging necessary to ensure broadcasters can accurately and effectively track and report on advertisement reach.

Simplified Management

Server Core installation. Windows Server 2008 provides a componentized installation option for Windows Media Services 2008. All unneeded components and services except for the components used for streaming are removed. This results in a minimized attack surface, more efficient use of system resources, and substantially reduced servicing for headless, dedicated streaming servers, giving them appliance-like performance and reliability.
Server Manager. Windows Server 2008 provides a one-stop interface for server configuration and monitoring. Server Manager is an addition to familiar options including Microsoft Management Console (MMC), Web, script, and command-line control; it allows general IT professionals to administer Web and streaming servers with a higher-level console consistent with other Windows server roles.

Scenario-based Wizards and Help. Windows Media Services 2008 makes it easy for non-media professionals to integrate streaming servers into their existing network.
HTTP protocol support. Windows Media Services 2008 provides consistent streaming across Internet- and intranet- based routers, switches, and firewalls.
Powerful Object Model and Event Mechanism. Developers can choose from over 1,000 methods, interfaces, and properties for rich customization of the server. Combined with support for DCOM/WBEM/WMI and an extensive object model, Windows Media Services 2008 provides the most powerful platform for the development of customized streaming solutions.
Broad programming language support including .NET 2.0. Create plug-ins and custom server-based applications for event management, logging, authentication and more.

Please click on the following links to learn more:

If you have any feedback, please let us know on the WMS Newsgroup, or comment on this post.

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