Search results matching tag 'Media'

Streaming Media West

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:38:41 GMT

This week, I'm at Streaming Media West in San Jose, California. Seeing the sun, blue skies and relatively warm weather is a pleasant change from the rain swept northwest.
Today is a special pre-conference half-day workshop on Live Broadcasting with Silverlight and Windows Media, which my colleague Chris Knowlton is running. We're videotaping it for posterity and will get it posted as soon as we can.
On Wednesday morning, Marc Whitten, GM of Xbox Live will be delivering the keynote at 9am and on Wednesday afternoon, Steven Woodward from Microsoft and Mike Moser from Vertigo will be delivering a special session on real-world Smooth Streaming using a very recent and timely event as an example.
The exhibition runs Tuesday evening through Thursday afternoon and we'll have a special 20 minute presentation of Smooth Streaming on the show floor on Thursday at 1pm.
If you want to attend the conference or exhibition and don't yet have a pass, you can register at a discounted rate by going to https://secure.infotoday.com/forms/default.aspx?form=smw2009 and using the VIPMSFT as the promo code.

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

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…

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

Tech-Ed Japan Smooth Streamed

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:06:06 GMT

Tech-Ed Japan 2009 has embraced Smooth Streaming. You can watch the keynote (in Japanese) for a few more days here. Enjoy!

IIS7 – To be noted while using Expression Encoder to upload large files to IIS server

rakkimk — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:09:36 GMT

Internet is full of videos, and you have a power packed set of tools for IIS to make media streaming top-notch experience. You have IIS Media Pack enabling intelligent progressive downloads, smooth streaming, throttling, etc. You have tools from Microsoft such as Expression Encoder……..

Read the full post at http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/07/30/iis7-to-be-noted-while-using-expression-encoder-to-upload-large-files-to-iis-server.aspx

TIm Harader and John Bishop in Live HD web event Thur the 16th

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:02:00 GMT

So, Millimeter is hosting a live web event about Live Smooth Streaming, featuring the always-awesome John Bishop of Inlet and our own (also excellent) Tim Harader.

With those two together, expect an hour of real-world experience and context with awesome technical details and delivered with a charming Carolina lilt.

It's Thursday, July 16th, at 2pm Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -5)

You can register here:
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=153230&sessionid=1&key=00ED2EDFCB275415AFB7059389F8B18B&partnerref=mminlethdv4&sourcepage=register

Full description:

Learn how to deliver web video with the quality and reliability of HDTV. Dramatically increase viewing times and repeat visits using this scalable online video delivery technology.

Standard video on the Web is plagued by 2 major issues: the quality of the video (either too small or too blurry) and the reliability of the playback (constant rebuffering or stuttering). These two variables are interrelated: increasing the quality requires higher bandwidth, and using less bandwidth to minimize rebuffering sacrifices video quality.

Smooth Streaming solves these issues by dynamically modifying the bandwidth of the video stream based on available bandwidth and individual PC performance. This process is invisible to viewers; they just connect to the live event. If bandwidth drops, the video seamlessly transitions to the next lower stream. When the bandwidth recovers, the stream will automatically use the higher bandwidth. This enables the viewer to watch the live event in the best possible quality at all times, without pauses or interruptions in the video stream.

During this webcast, you will learn about Smooth Streaming from two industry experts, who will teach you:

What Smooth Streaming is and why it is the future of online video delivery

How Smooth Streaming delivers HDTV-quality experiences

How it has been successfully implemented for major live events

How to start delivering your content with Smooth Streaming

Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 announcement roundup

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:35:00 GMT

So, Silverlight 3 was released today, and the Expression Studio is available in a public release candidate, including the awesome Expression Encoder 2.

I'll have a bunch more to say about it, of course, but first off let me just provide links to the important stuff relating to the media side of things.

Scott Guthrie's always-excellent blog post roundup:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-released.aspx

Technical overview of media features:
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/overview/media/media-details.aspx#smooth

Expression Encoder 3 overview:
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder_Overview.aspx

Extensive blog post about Expression Encoder 3 new features (it is awesome):
http://blogs.msdn.com/expressionencoder/archive/2009/07/10/9828866.aspx

Alas, the RC of that isn't available for download quite yet. Soon, I'm told.

And I had this interview on Streaming Media about the new media features:
http://streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11268

My Silverlight 3 preview up at StreamingMedia.com

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:11:00 GMT

The newest in my "Silverlight Guru" interviews with Troy Dreier is up now. It offers a concise overview of some of the big features we have coming for Silverlight 3 and with our encoding infrastructure.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11268

And the previous installments are here:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11188
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11140

We're doing these roughly once a month, mainly driven by questions from the Streaming Media forums or send directly to Troy.

As Troy alwasy ends the interviews:

Submit your Silverlight questions to Streaming Media’s Formats, Codecs, and Players forum, or send them directly to the author at