Chris Knowlton's Blog : news

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 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

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