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Demo – how to create HLS and Smooth Streaming assets using dynamic packaging

This blog post is a walk-through on how to create HLS and Smooth Streaming assets using dynamic packaging with Windows Azure Media Services (WAMS), by using .NET SDK.

What is dynamic packing?

Before talking about dynamic packing, we have to mention what’s the traditional way of doing things. If you want to delivery both Http Live Streaming and Smooth Streaming, you have to store both of them. Therefore, you stream HLS content to iOS devices and Smooth Streaming content to Windows 8 for instance. However, by using dynamic packing feature in WAMS, You only need to store a Mp4 file in your storage, and we dynamically packaging Mp4 file into HLS or Smooth Streaming based on your client request. If it needs HLS stream, we will package Mp4 into HLS on the fly, and serve out to your client. In this case, you no longer need to store a copy of smooth streaming and HLS, hence, we help you save storage cost by half at least. This diagram below demonstrates what I just described: Read more here

My Experience of NAB Show 2013

My Experience of NAB Show 2013

This is my first time attending NAB show and this year, it was held at Vegas Convention center from April 6th to 11th. My team (Windows Azure Media Services) shared Microsoft booth area with other products such as Surface, Office 365 and Big Data. While setting up the booth on Sunday before the even started, I took a walk in the convention center and I saw booth setups with gigantic broadcast TV screens, pro-grade camera control panel, multi-angle cameras, it felt like being in Hollywood studios or Big News TV channels. When I joined the Windows Azure Media Services a year ago,it was to work on cloud computing technologies and I never thought I will end up being associated to the broadcasting industry. NAB Show, makes this association very tangible for me now, during these 4 days in Vegas, I felt the excitement of being part of such massive and fast moving industry. Broadcast business has its magic, it captivates its audience, it’s an art that I have witnessed in Vegas. Read more here

Windows Azure Media Services Pricing Details

This blog is credited to Program Manager Anton Kucer in our Media services team. I learnt a lot pricing detail from a email conversation with him. If you choose to use Windows Azure Media Services, here is a detail explanation of what you will need to pay. Also, it provides some guidance on how you choose right amount of services such as # of reserved units. If you have more questions, please put your comments below and I will pick them up into Q&A section in this blog.

These are pricing details posted on official Windows Azure home page. Please read the official post first and if you still have questions, read this blog which is my best effort for explaining pricing. As said, if you choose to go through general media workflow (encoding your content and host them for streaming purpose), you will incur 4 types of costs. Read More Here

Breaking changes for Windows Azure Media Services .NET SDK GA

On Dec 14th 2012, we update our .NET SDK to 2.0.1.0 and you could download the latest SDK here. And starting from yesterday (Jan 14th, 2013), we drop the support for older version of .NET SDK, which we released in Preview. In another word, our server no longer recognizes some of your old APIs. If you find your older version of .NET SDK no longer works, don’t panic! Please read through this blog and see whether you could fix the code. 

If you still can’t find a clue, please bring your question to Windows Azure Media Services Forum and we will try our best to help you. Read more here

Client Ecosystem for Windows Azure Media Services

This blog gives an overview of what kind of client support Microsoft offers as part of Windows Azure media Services. On one side, you could create, manage, package and deliver media asset through Windows Azure media services. Many popular streaming formats are supported, such as Smooth Streaming, Http Llive Streaming and MPEG-dash. On the other hand, we provide various SDKs and frameworks for you to consume media asset by building rich media applications rapidly on many platforms, such as PC, XBox, mobile and etc.

VIDEO DELIVERY THROUGH BROWSER

Today, though people started to watch videos on different devices, video streaming on desktop through browser is the most popular way for video delivery. Most businesses built rich media applications with plugin such as Silverlight or Flash. For instance, Netflix web version is built using Silverlight and Hulu web version is using Flash. This plugin approach works fine for majority of operating systems and browsers. Read More Here

How to generate Http Live Streaming (HLS) content using Windows Azure Media Services

If you want to deliver video content to iOS devices and platform, the best option you have is to package your content into Http Live Streaming. HLS is Apple’s implementation of adaptive streaming and here is some useful resources from Apple. Apple implements the format but they don’t provide hosting. You could use Apache server for hosting HLS content, but better, you could choose Windows Azure Media Services – a way to host video in the cloud. Therefore, you don’t need to manage infrastructure and worry about scalability: Azure takes care of all that for you.

Scenario One: You have a .Mp4 file and you want to package into HLS and stream out from Windows Azure Media Services.

Here is how you could do it through Windows Azure Management Portal: Read More Here

Announcing Windows Azure Media Player framework Preview for IOS

I am pleased to announce that Windows Azure Media Services team is releasing a Windows Azure Media Player Framework Preview for iOS. This new framework is released as Open Source through Github: https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-media-player-framework and licensed under Apache 2.0.

Printscreen for Azure Media Player framework for IOS

What’s this framework for?

This framework enables developers to build native video application on iOS platform, which could consume secure HLS (Http live Streaming) content from Windows Azure Media Services. Mainly,this framework made easy for developers to integrate client-side advertisements. In the future we will also support various advertisement standards, such as VAST 3.0 and VMAP 1.0. Read More Here

Windows Azure Media Services Session info for Build 2012

Windows Azure Media Services Session info for Build 2012

This blog post is for my session 3-035 Building video applications on Windows 8 with Windows Azure Media Services. This session should be over by the time this post available. And I apologize if I failed to squeeze everything into one hour. However, I do hope you enjoyed session and I’d love to listen to your feedback.

Here is all the materials I promised.  Read More…

Building video application on Windows 8 – things you want to know

Building video application on Windows 8 – things you want to know

If you want to build video applications on Windows 8 platform, you may find this blog useful. We (Windows Azure Media Services team) ships Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 and Microsoft Media Platform Player framework (MMPPF) in addition to Windows 8 Media Foundation to help you build rich media applications.

Building Video application on Windows 8 – what are supported? 

If you are building a video application on Windows 8 and your video source is H.264 (.MP4) for instance: Read More Here

Introducing Windows Azure Media Services .NET SDK NuGet package

Official Windows Azure Media Services Nuget package is here: Media Services Nuget Page. And you could search it by windowsazure.mediaservices. NuGet is a Visual Studio extension that makes it easy to add, remove, and update libraries and tools in Visual Studio projects that use the .NET Framework. If you have no idea what Nuget is, go and check out this overview.

Media services .NET SDK works with .NET 4.0 framework and it includes the following three components: Read More Here

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