RTW of Live Smooth Streaming is now… Live.

jboch — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:22:00 GMT

We’re excited to announce that IIS Media Services 3.0, which includes the RTW of Live Smooth Streaming is now available for download (WebPI, x86, x64). This release builds on the Beta’s functionality that delivered:

Smooth bit-rate switching that provides your users the best possible quality at that moment in time
Massive scalability through the use of cacheable HTTP
Integrated Network DVR

The team has been hard at work since the Beta making the product better. So what’s new in RTW? Here are the highlights...

High Availability – multi-tier scalability and failover
24/7 and long-running event support
Ad insertion support

Try it out today by following the steps in one of the following walkthroughs:

You can also download the new Smooth Streaming Deployment Guide for a step-by-step description of the encoding, server, and client set up for Smooth Streaming in a single document. Finally, don’t forget to check out the IIS Media Services Showcase, which gives a visual overview of the IIS Smooth Streaming deployments to date and a flavor for the kinds of experiences they delivered to users.

Please don’t hesitate to provide feedback on this release. Look forward to hearing about your experience…

Live Smooth Streaming: Try It Now, No Encoder Required

jboch — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:30:45 GMT

Announced at the MIX09 keynote, Live Smooth Streaming was released for download (WebPI, x86, x64) on Wednesday. You don’t need a live encoder to try this at home. Read below for the how…

What is Live Smooth Streaming?

Live Smooth Streaming provides the same great user experience as its Video On-Demand counterpart, using the same scalable delivery method that takes full advantage of commodity HTTP caches. In short, a user experience that…

Starts playback and seeks instantly
Does not stop to buffer
Deliver the best quality your bandwidth and CPU allow at the moment

Live Smooth Streaming archives incoming data and provides a full Network Digital Video Recorder (DVR). It works just like a TiVo for online video, with support for replay, pause, and jumping back to the live broadcast. If you start watching a broadcast late, you can always jump back to see what you missed, and then resume watching the live broadcast.

How can I try Live Smooth Streaming?

See the “Getting Started” walkthrough for detailed instructions. In a nutshell the steps are:

Install and configure the Live Smooth Streaming Beta (WebPI, x86, x64)
Install the sample content (Big Buck Bunny) and the Live Smooth Streaming Starter Kit
Simulate the Live broadcast using the pushencoder Tool

Open a browser and enjoy the experience. The pushencoder tool in the Starter Kit also allows you to simulate a live broadcast from any Smooth Streaming assets you have created with Expression Encoder. From a command line, simply supply the URL of the publishing and the path to the .ism file for your asset with a command like:

pushencoder64 <url-of-publishingpoint> <ism-file>

Can the Beta really do Live broadcasts?

Yes! At Thursday’s IIS Media Services session MIX09, we (IIS and Inlet) had a lot of fun pulling back the curtain on an end-to-end broadcast setup including an uncompressed signal source, encoders, server, and client. You can watch the recording of the session online (seek to 60:00 for the Live Smooth Streaming demo) at:

http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T56F

Where can I learn more?

Check out the IIS Media Services page, the Live Smooth Streaming feature page, and the walkthrough on “Creating and Managing Publishing Points”. Please feel free leave any questions you may have as comments, and I will gladly address them in a future post.

On behalf of the entire team, it’s our pleasure to make the Beta available for download. We’d love to hear about your experience and any feedback you may have.

--John

John A. Bocharov's Blog : Live Smooth Streaming

RTW of Live Smooth Streaming is now… Live.

Live Smooth Streaming: Try It Now, No Encoder Required