Vishal Sood

Smooth Streaming Plugin for Flash

vishalsood — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:17:00 +0000

We announced a release of a final version of Smooth Streaming Plugin for Open Source Media Framework (OSMF). Please read Cenk's blog post for details. Here is a quick blurb from Cenk's post: We are pleased to announce that Windows Azure Media Services...(read more)

Shipped: Smooth Streaming Client SDK Beta 1 Refresh for Windows 8 Release Preview

vishalsood — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 06:20:33 +0000

I hope you have already seen the blog post from our team announcing the Smooth Streaming release to accompany Windows 8 Release Preview here . As Cenk blogs, we are very excited about this release and hope you all will build compelling rich media experiences...(read more)

Roku releases support for Smooth Streaming

vishalsood — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:50:49 +0000

At NAB 2012 in April, we announced an initial list of partners that licensed Smooth Streaming Client Porting Kit (link). Today, Roku announced that the support for Smooth Streaming is publicly available for Roku 2, Roku LT and Roku HD devices with version Roku software version 4.7. This update will be pushed to these devices in next 48 hours. You can get more details on their blog.

Congratulations to the team at Roku for this release. We are very excited to see the release.

Writing a simple Metro app for Windows 8 that consumes Smooth Streaming

vishalsood — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:35:00 +0000

Cenk on the media team blogged about how to create a simple Metro app using standard video element that can consume Smooth Streaming content. You can check it out here.

Here is a short intro:

“In this post I'll cover how to build a basic HTML5 Metro Style Smooth Streaming Player using the IIS Smooth Streaming Client SDK Beta for Metro Style Apps. This basic application enables the HTML5 tag with Smooth Streaming in Metro style apps. “

Please check out the complete post here.

Announcing: Smooth Streaming Client SDK (Beta) for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

vishalsood — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:52:00 +0000

On Wednesday, February 29, Windows division proudly unveiled the Windows 8 Consumer Preview release to the world. As of Friday March 9, we are excited to announce a beta of the new Smooth Streaming Client for Windows 8, which provides capabilities to integrate Smooth Streaming to video element in Windows 8 Metro style apps. Aligned to this release is the release of Player Framework for Windows 8 that makes it easy for you to build rich apps that consume video and provides player controls that you can use in your Windows Metro Style Applications.

Using Player Framework and Smooth Streaming Client SDK you can build rich media experiences on Windows 8 using the same back-end infrastructure you use today to target Smooth Streaming playback to other devices like browser, Windows Phone, Set-top boxes, other mobile devices and so on.

This version of the Smooth Streaming Client and Player Framework lights the following capabilities with the video element:

On-demand Playback (Play, Pause, Stop, Seek)

Live Playback (Playback)

VC-1 and H.264 codec support

Content Protection w/ PlayReady integration

Getting Started

The initial documentation is available through Readme included with the release, and you can download the Smooth Streaming Client for Windows 8 (Beta) from the Visual Studio Gallery.

To help you get started with this new SDK using the Player Framework, we’re providing a getting started documentation on CodePlex. To get started developing on Windows 8 you should head over to the Windows 8 Dev Center.

For more information on the Smooth Streaming Platform and ecosystem you can visit IIS.net Media and Microsoft Media Platform sites.

Feedback

As this is a beta release, you’re likely to hit issues, have feature requests, or want to provide general feedback—we want to hear it all! Please use the Smooth Streaming Client on Windows 8 Forum thread to let us know what’s working, what isn’t, and how we can improve your Smooth Streaming development experience for Metro style apps.

Project Management: SCRUM in under 10 minutes

vishalsood — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:10:09 +0000

This is a great video that summarizes the essence of SCRUM in a very short video. Very to the point and effective.

This video was created by Axosoft.com

IIS Smooth Streaming Talk from Microsoft PDC 09

vishalsood — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 02:06:11 +0000

I gave this talk at Microsoft PDC 09 but it is still very relevant so I thought I should share this with the readers of this blog.

IIS Smooth Streaming encoding for Windows Phone 7

vishalsood — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:16:43 +0000

We recently announced the release of IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.1 for Windows Phone 7 (link). Shortly after, Microsoft also announced release of client’s companion Silverlight Media Framework (SMF) 2.2 (link). SMF utilizes the client and offers easier app development for Windows Phone 7 through rich controls. I would not get into this more at this point of time. You can always find more documentation on that online.

Using the tools above you can have an awesome app on an awesome phone :). Here is a quick snapshot of what Silverlight Media Framework (SMF) based default player looks like.

What you want in addition is an awesome experience for the end users streaming and that is more than building a great app. Windows Phone 7 requires you to encode your videos in a special way. In this post I wanted to cover that topic and provide some tips on how you can ensure that the experience is awesome too.

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Encoding requirements

The article on MSDN titled ‘Supported Media Codecs for Windows Phone’ outlines the various codecs, resolution, profile, etc. that WP7 supports. I would encourage you to look at it if you haven’t already. As this post talks about IIS Smooth Streaming for WP7, I have compiled a short list (cheat sheet) of things you need to care about.

Supported Codecs
- Device: VC1 / H.264 for video, WMA Pro/HEAAC/AACL for audio. You can refer to link mentioned above for more details on profiles, etc.
- Emulator: As of now only VC1/WMA is supported in the emulator. This means you would need a device to test playback of H.264 content.
Maximum Resolution (H.264)
- 720 x 480 pixels at 30 fps
- 720 x 576 pixels at 25 fps
Support for Variable resolution streams – NO.
- Let me explain this further. If you have done Smooth Streaming, you will see that for most content, most bitrates have a different encoded resolution. This is not supported on WP7 today and all bitrates should have the same resolution. I have covered this more in FAQ section below as well.

Recommended Profile

Disclaimer: We strongly encourage you to test this profile in your network and app conditions before you go out an deploy this. We have tested the below and found it works well in most conditions but you can never be too sure.

The reason I start with a disclaimer here is that it is hard to find the best profile that meets everyone’s needs and encoding is a really specialized field. The profile mentioned below should work well in most conditions. Also, the profile mentioned below is if you are targeting WP7 only. You can mix is it with other profiles to find a super profile that works multi screen for you. Super profile is a topic for another post as that is a much longer conversation.

There are quite a few things to take into consideration while designing your profile. Some of these are:

Be aware of the device’s constraints in terms of bitrate, resolution, etc. You totally don’t want to stream something the device can’t play or can’t play well.
There will be some users who would stream over WiFi but at the same time there will be some who try to stream over 3G. 3G networks would have higher latencies involved. Having a good range of bitrates helps.
The device will be in motion, think of a person travelling with the phone in his car and streaming. This does not affect encoding profiles directly but it does have some bearing. Having a good range of bitrates helps here too.
Another thing to keep in mind is are there other devices you want to target with the same content. If yes, what are the restrictions of those devices.

Video

Keeping the above considerations in mind, here is a profile that we recommend you use:

Video Codec	Profile @ Level	Bitrate	Width	Height	FPS
H.264	Main @ 3.0	1000	640	352	Full <= 30
H.264	Main @ 3.0	800	640	352	Full <= 30
H.264	Main @ 3.0	600	640	352	Full <= 30
H.264	Main @ 3.0	400	640	352	Full <= 30
H.264	Main @ 3.0	200	640	352	Half <= 15
H.264	Main @ 3.0	100	640	352	Half <= 15

Audio

You could pick either AAC-LC or HEAAC:

AAC-LC audio at 64 kbps 48 kHz mono.
HE-AAC audio at 64 kbps 48 kHz mono.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

I already have content encoded with variable resolutions, what do I do to make it work on WP7?
Ans: You can use the RestrictTracks API provided by the IIS Smooth Streaming Client on Windows Phone 7 to restrict the set of video tracks (or QualityLevels) to a set that has the same resolution. In the worst case this would be just a single bitrate. Of course, the other option would be to re-encode. Note: RestrictTracks should be called in the event handler for ManifestReady for it to work as intended.
I am encoding content for multiple screens, are there any recommendations for me?
Ans: There are various ways to solve this. One of them is to use a profile that is a superset of bitrates each screen requires (e.g., Windows Phone and Silverlight on desktop). Once you have this set (a.k.a. super profile) use APIs in the client to restrict playback to the intended subset of bitrates for that device (you can use RestrictTracks on Phone and SelectTracks for desktop). Other options include keeping separate assets for each non overlapping screen. Note: RestrictTracks should be called in the event handler for ManifestReady for it to work as intended.
Can I have a mix of baseline and main profile content in a single stream for H.264 Smooth content?
Ans: No, this is not currently supported.
Does emulator support H.264 content playback?
Ans: No, emulator does not support H.264 playback. You would need a device to test H.264 Smooth Streaming playback.
Does Windows Phone 7 support H.264 Profile Level 3.1?
Ans: Only H.264 profile level 3.0 is guaranteed to work as of today. Detailed codec specific limitations are available here.
Is the suggestion to always use for IIS Smooth Streaming Client for Smooth Streaming content playback on Windows Phone 7? Can I write my own client?
Ans:IIS team strongly discourages writing your own client as the intention of the client is to ease development and provide consistent support across server versions. To ease development you can also use Silverlight Media Framework (SMF) 2.2 or higher. SMF internally uses IIS Smooth Streaming Client but facilitates faster app development with ready-made controls.

So you want to do a Web startup

vishalsood — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:37:52 +0000

I had to share this. This is so funny and yet very true. I have seen this happening around me.

NAB Show 2010 – it was fabulous

vishalsood — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:06:00 +0000

I just came back from Las Vegas yesterday after attending the NAB Show. It was my first NAB Show and it was a fabulous experience. If you have never attended a NAB show and you are related to broadcasting space or even online media space, I strongly recommend attending it next year to get an understanding of sheer size of the show and the potential.

My purpose for attending this show was to network with participants, evangelize IIS Smooth Streaming and look for partnership opportunities. I think the show met the purpose on all three fronts. Thank you all those who visited our booth and gave us a chance to provide details on the cool technology pieces we are building at Microsoft. Here is the complete Microsoft press release from NAB.

While we had a lot going on at the booth, here are things we were demoing at our stations directly:

IIS Smooth Streaming Client and Silverlight Media Framework (SMF) – showcased demos with Multiple audio languages and subtitles using SMF and the demos worked flawless. We demoed how you could build a player with less than 10 lines of code using SMF.

IIS Smooth Streaming in 3D – this demo was a crowd puller. It may be the colored 3D glasses but people loved watching 3D content in a browser and the same content was also demoed on a TV connected to a set top box running Silverlight. This demo was done working very closely with Level 3. More details here.

Rough Cut Editor tool – this is another super cool tool. You can create a new source by combing portions of multiple individual sources (including live sources) in a matter of a few minutes. The tool is really easy to use and super useful in creating highlights.

Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework (MSAF) and visualizations of data using Pivot / Azure (Silverlytics) – SAF already integrates top analytics providers and enables easy analytics integration for Silverlight applications including the ones that use IIS Smooth Streaming. The folks at Location 3 Media used MSAF and Microsoft Pivot to create some super cool visualizations for real-time analytics data.

Silverlight Enhanced Movie Framework – this framework allows for rich Blu-ray like experiences with offline Silverlight apps. The demos included the movie “The Hangover” among others at the booth.

IIS Smooth Streaming for iPhone / iPad - at the booth we demoed live IIS Smooth Streaming to an iPhone and iPad. The same stream was also consumed in Silverlight at the same time.

IIS Smooth Streaming for Windows Phone 7

IIS Smooth Streaming for Nokia S60 devices

Expression Encoder 4 (EE4) – the demo here was encoding and delivering HD content using IIS Smooth Streaming and EE4 running on the same machine. EE4 is going to be a great tool when it ships. All you enthusiasts should watch out for the release.

Here are some screenshots from the demos:

View Full Album

As you can guess from a really strong lineup above we had an emphatic response at the booth. Customers/ Partners were always at our booth and showed appreciation for the technology. We had a good mix of visitors from large corporations to small startup shops.

At Microsoft we really value our partners so there were some really cool partner demos at our booth from Kaltura, Extend Media, THX, Level 3 and many more. I will try to cover them in subsequent blog posts. Trust me if you weren’t there, you would love to know more about them and if you were there, you must have surely loved them. Let me know your thoughts on NAB and demos through comments. Looking forward to hear from you.

Facebook Connect for Drupal (FConnect) Beta 4 available for download

vishalsood — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:44:28 +0000

After Beta 1, Beta 2 and Beta3, time for yet another update. Beta 4 of fconnect is now available for download.

This release has a few new major features and a lot of bug fixes:

New Features

Users now have the option to use their facebook profile picture with their Drupal account. Picture size is configurable.
This module now uses Drupal’s default registration process to enable single workflow for some Drupal sites.
The fconnect block now allows linking friend pictures to either Drupal or Facebook profile.

Here are some snapshots:

Bug Fixes

There are several bug fixes in this release. Here is a list of issues fixed in this release (click image below to see a larger image):

Tracking Issues and Discussions

Many users have expressed difficulties in reporting issues and having discussions around this module. I am in the process of hosting this module on a site and have setup a bug database (Bugzilla) and Forum on the new site. As I go through this process please feel free to use the Bugzilla DB and Forum to discuss and report issues.

The next release of this module will be available on the new site: http://hukode.com. I will keep you all posted on that.

Installation Instructions

Installation instructions are available at the Beta 1 page.

Note: If you are upgrading an earlier version, you would need to uninstall the module and install again. You may also run the <siteroot>/update.php.

To uninstall and install again, do this:

Go to Modules in your Administration theme
De-select FConnect and Save. This step uninstalls
Select and save again. This re-installs

Download

The module can be downloaded by clicking the attachment below.

Note: You need to be logged in to view and download the module.

Composite Manifest Support for Rough Cut Editing scenarios

vishalsood — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:42:35 +0000

We released the Beta 2 for the IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit (SSPDK) that contains the SmoothStreamingMediaElement (SSME) interface. With this release we added a fun new feature. We refer to this as Composite Manifest Support for Rough Cut Editing. The idea is simple:

I have many clips but want to create a composite clip taking relevant portions from these clips.
I have a large clip from an NBA game, I want to create a highlight for this game.

Now, let’s expand this simple idea. Not only do I want the above, I also want the ability to present this as a single stream to the user. This means the user can fast forward, rewind across the entire highlights and seek to any points in the highlight. In addition, I can add markers and present useful information to the user watching the stream. Well, this is exactly what we enabled with the Beta 2 release of SSPDK.

Composite Manifest

At the heart of this feature are small updates to the existing IIS Smooth Streaming Client manifest structure and we this new manifest a composite stream manifest (.csm). If you have used Smooth Streaming, you might already be familiar with the client manifest structure. Here is what it looks like before this feature:

Code Snippet

          <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16" ?>

          <!--

           Created with Expression Encoder version 3.0.1332.0

          -->

          <SmoothStreamingMedia MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" Duration="300000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="15" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" DisplayWidth="640" DisplayHeight="480" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBF213F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBE613F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBDC13F0EF8A13F83BE80C90811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD60D509F8A0D5827E80C9081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD00D509F8A0D5827E80C9081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBCC0D509F8A0D5827E80C90808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C80B50878A0B5821E80C9080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C60B50878A0B5821E80C90800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22350000" />

           <c t="42370000" />

           <c t="62390000" />

           <c t="82410000" />

           <c t="102430000" />

           <c t="122450000" />

           <c t="142470000" />

           <c t="162490000" />

           <c t="182510000" />

           <c t="202530000" />

           <c t="222550000" />

           <c t="242570000" />

           <c t="262590000" />

           <c t="282610000" d="17350001" />

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="15" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22291156" />

           <c t="40867120" />

           <c t="60371882" />

           <c t="84056235" />

           <c t="100774603" />

           <c t="121208163" />

           <c t="143034920" />

           <c t="160682086" />

           <c t="181580045" />

           <c t="202013605" />

           <c t="221518367" />

           <c t="242880725" />

           <c t="260789115" />

           <c t="282354648" d="17993650" />

           </StreamIndex>

          </

          SmoothStreamingMedia

          >

To explain the structure in simpler terms, we have the following relationship: SmoothStreamingMedia contains StreamIndex that contains QualityLevel and ‘c’ elements.

Clip Element

Let’s say, I only want the first 10 seconds of the clip above as one of the clips in the RCE manifest. In the new RCE structure I would represent this as below:

Note: <<source to original manifest>> actually points to the URL for the manifest from which we need to play first 10 seconds.

Code Snippet

          <Clip Url="<<source to original manifest>>" ClipBegin="0" ClipEnd="100000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" DisplayWidth="640" DisplayHeight="480" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBF213F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBE613F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBDC13F0EF8A13F83BE80C90811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD60D509F8A0D5827E80C9081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD00D509F8A0D5827E80C9081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBCC0D509F8A0D5827E80C90808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C80B50878A0B5821E80C9080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C60B50878A0B5821E80C90800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22350000" />

           <c t="42370000" />

           <c t="62390000" />

           <c t="82410000" d="20020000" />

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22291156" />

           <c t="40867120" />

           <c t="60371882" />

           <c t="84056235" d="16718368" />

           </StreamIndex>

          </

          Clip

          >

If you notice carefully, all we have done is changed the relationship above to: SmoothStreamingMedia contains Clip and Clip contains StreamIndex. Finally StreamIndex contains QualityLevel and ‘c’ elements.

While doing this we defined a new element called Clip which has attributes called Url, ClipBegin and ClipEnd.

Url – this specifies the Url to the original source manifest from which these clips were cut. The value is exactly as you would set on the SmoothStreamingSource property in SSME (e.g., http://abcxyz.com/sample.ism/Manifest).
ClipBegin – This specifies the time in nanoseconds where to begin the playback for the clip.
ClipEnd – This specifies time in nanoseconds where to end to end the playback for the clip.

You will also notice that ‘c’ elements are still present in this composite manifest. This is done so that this manifest is self sufficient and you don’t need to download the source manifest. ‘c’ elements are essentially chunk timestamps for the FMP4 chunks the client will download.

Note: Not all ‘c’ elements are included in this manifest. The idea is to include only the ones needed to represent the section of the clip. In this case times are close to the ClipBegin and ClipEnd. They may not exactly match in timestamps as chunks are 2 seconds apart typically while the Clip is cut at finer granularity.

Multiple Clip Elements

In the section above, we saw how to compose a single clip. However, composite manifest promises to have multiple such clips stitched together. All you need to do is to have multiple such Clip elements and that takes care of that. Here is how an example of composite manifest with two clips will will look like:

Code Snippet

          <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

          <SmoothStreamingMedia MajorVersion="2" MinorVersion="0" Duration="200000000">

           <Clip Url="http://abcxyz.com/sample.ism/Manifest" ClipBegin="0" ClipEnd="100000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" DisplayWidth="640" DisplayHeight="480" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBF213F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBE613F0EF8A13F83BE80C9081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="640" MaxHeight="480" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBDC13F0EF8A13F83BE80C90811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD60D509F8A0D5827E80C9081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBD00D509F8A0D5827E80C9081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="428" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBCC0D509F8A0D5827E80C90808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C80B50878A0B5821E80C9080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="364" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FC3C60B50878A0B5821E80C90800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22350000" />

           <c t="42370000" />

           <c t="62390000" />

           <c t="82410000" d="20020000" />

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="0" />

           <c t="22291156" />

           <c t="40867120" />

           <c t="60371882" />

           <c t="84056235" d="16718368" />

           </StreamIndex>

           </Clip>

           <Clip Url="http://abcxyz.com/sample2.ism/Manifest" ClipBegin="60000000" ClipEnd="160000000">

           <StreamIndex Type="video" Chunks="5" QualityLevels="8" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" DisplayWidth="848" DisplayHeight="476" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(video={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Index="0" Bitrate="1644000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBB21A70ED8A1A783B68045081B22B6457400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="1" Bitrate="1241000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCBA61A70ED8A1A783B68045081A5DECBBE400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="2" Bitrate="937000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="848" MaxHeight="476" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB9C1A70ED8A1A783B680450811C97F260C00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="3" Bitrate="708000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="568" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB9611B09F8A11B827E8045081159AD66CC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="4" Bitrate="534000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="568" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB9011B09F8A11B827E8045081104B412F400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="5" Bitrate="403000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="568" MaxHeight="320" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB8C11B09F8A11B827E80450808C4BE263400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="6" Bitrate="305000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="480" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB880EF0878A0EF821E8045080894E4A76400000010E5A67F840" />

           <QualityLevel Index="7" Bitrate="230000" FourCC="WVC1" MaxWidth="480" MaxHeight="272" CodecPrivateData="250000010FCB860EF0878A0EF821E80450800704704DC00000010E5A67F840" />

           <c t="60000000" />

           <c t="80000000" />

           <c t="100000000" />

           <c t="120000000" />

           <c t="140000000" d="20000000"/>

           </StreamIndex>

           <StreamIndex Type="audio" Index="0" FourCC="WMAP" Chunks="6" QualityLevels="1" Url="QualityLevels({bitrate})/Fragments(audio={start time})">

           <QualityLevel Bitrate="192000" SamplingRate="44100" Channels="2" BitsPerSample="16" PacketSize="8917" AudioTag="354" CodecPrivateData="1000030000000000000000000000E0000000" />

           <c t="42724716" />

           <c t="61082992" />

           <c t="80341043" />

           <c t="103096598" />

           <c t="120279365" />

           <c t="142570521" d="21362358" />

           </StreamIndex>

           </Clip>

          </

          SmoothStreamingMedia

          >

With this, you can now upload this manifest along with the original manifests and content used by them to a HTTP accessible location. Next, set the SmoothStreamingSource property to the URL to this composite manifest and SSME should take care of the rest. Here is how it will look like in XAML:

Code Snippet

          <

          UserControl

           x

          :

          Class

          ="SilverlightApplication6.MainPage"

           xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

           xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

           xmlns:SSME="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;assembly=Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming"

           xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

           mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">

           <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">

           <SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement SmoothStreamingSource="http://abcxyz.com/SampleRCEManifest.csm" x:Name="SmoothPlayer" />

           </Grid>

          </

          UserControl

          >

We will have more detailed documentation up on iis.net very soon.In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.

IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit Beta 2 released

vishalsood — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:14:00 +0000

Today, we are very both excited and pleased to announce and release a Beta 2 of IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit (SSPDK) 1.0. With this release are adding support for Fast Forward/Rewind and Rough Cut Editing scenarios in addition to other features. Please see details below.

SSPDK is intended to aid the development of rich Smooth Streaming players and experiences. This Kit enables you to build players for both On Demand and Live playback with full DVR capabilities, Live Ad Insertion, Multiple Camera Angles and many more such rich functionalities. This Kit is available for download here – Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 2.

The kit includes:

Smooth Streaming Player SDK – This enables developers and designers to build rich Smooth Streaming player experiences. We are providing a .net (Silverlight) based SDK with full XAML support. The core part of this infrastructure is Smooth Streaming Media Element that is similar to Silverlight Media Element if you are already familiar with Silverlight development platform.

Push Encoder – This tool allows you to simulate a live stream for testing purposes.

Sample Smooth Streaming Player (built on Smooth Streaming Player SDK) – This is a sample that uses Smooth Streaming Player SDK and enables you to test the IIS Media Services 3.0.

In the meantime here is a high level overview of features that SSME supports today:

Basic Playback controls

APIs such as Play, Pause, Stop, etc.

Events for Playback and Diagnostics

Properties to track position, etc.

Advanced Playback support

DVR support for Live Smooth Streaming

Support for keeping track of Live event while in DVR (*new in Beta 2*)

Trick Play: Slow Motion

Trick Play: Fast Forward / Rewind (*new in Beta 2*)

H.264 / AAC support (*new in Beta 2*)

Monetization

Ad Playback integration – scheduling capabilities, tracking Ad progress

Live Ad Insertion with Live Smooth Streaming

Rich Analytics with IIS Advanced Logging

Support for specifying markers/Ad ingestion point outside the main manifest (*new in Beta 2*)

Content Protection – PlayReady integration for VC1 content

Composite Manifest Support for scenarios like Rough Cut Editing (*new in Beta 2*)

Selecting Tracks for playback (e.g., restrict the bit-rates available, support multiple camera angles in a single stream, etc.)

Support for progressive download Ads/content

SSME is used in Silverlight Media Framework(SMF) and the partnership helps facilitate faster player development

BREAKING CHANGES:

As the Beta evolved we have had to make some changes to some of our APIs. Here is a list of breaking changes:

Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming.SmoothStreamingMediaElementState replaces System.Web.Media.MediaElementState as type for CurrentState

ManifestDownloaded event is now called ManifestReady.

SmoothStreaming.IsClipPlaying property is deprecated. There is a new state SmoothStreamingMediaElementState.ClipPlaying for the same purpose.

Resources

Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 2

More Information on Smooth Player Development

API documentation for Smooth Streaming Player SDK

More Information on Smooth Streaming

More Information on Live Smooth Streaming

Supporting documentation on getting started

Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Getting Started

Live Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Getting Started

Smooth Streaming Deployment Guide

Building your first Smooth Streaming Player using SSME

If you are using this kit already to build rich experiences, do let us know. Send me the URL to your player or just add comments below. We are looking forward to customers building really rich experiences.

Facebook Connect for Drupal (FConnect) Beta 3 available for download

vishalsood — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:23:27 +0000

NOTE: A newer version of this module is available here.

After Beta 1 and Beta 2, here we go with another update. Beta 3 for FConnect is now available for download.

If you are the kinds who just want the bits, skip everything below and just download the module at the end of this article and get going. Good Luck!

(Note: You need to be logged in to get the download link)

Beta 3 is about a lot of “mores”:

More options around the Facebook Share button
- Control which kind of content shows this button
- Configure Button look-n-feel
More control over the login button options (now you can use either the Drupal login form or the FConnect block to show the Facebook login button)
More stability
Fixes for Facebook API updates

In addition, you still enjoy all existing features:

Login using Facebook Credentials (also in Beta 1)
Configure the Facebook Connect Block (also in Beta 1)
Recent Status Update (from Beta 2)
Allow existing users to associate their site account with Facebook (from Beta 2)
Facebook Share button (from Beta 2)

Here are little more details on the new feature.

Facebook Share Button

There are following new options to play with around the facebook share button:

Optionally, show button in teaser views (think front page)
Optionally, choose the button style from many available styles from Facebook for the teaser/full/both views
Optionally, choose to display a big share button with share count in Full content view

You can configure these options from the settings page for the FConnect module:

In addition you can also control, what content types should show the share button. Simply go to Content types, click to edit the content type and then select/de-select the check-box “Show Facebook Share button on this type of node” under Workflow Settings.

FConnect Block

As I suggested above, there are more control options for the FConnect block. You can now additionally show a login button in the block. This will help those who don’t use the Drupal login form.

Installation Instructions

Installation instructions are available at the Beta 1 page.

Note: If you are upgrading an earlier version, you would need to uninstall the module and install again. You may also run the <siteroot>/update.php.

To uninstall and install again, do this:

Go to Modules in your Administration theme
De-select FConnect and Save. This step uninstalls
Select and save again. This re-installs

Support

If you like this effort, please consider supporting it in the form of donations. Click below to donate.

Download

The module can be downloaded by clicking the attachment below.

Note: You need to be logged in to download the module.

FarmVille: Enhancements and new Monetization Ideas

vishalsood — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:45:15 +0000

I must admit that I have spent a lot of time on my online farm growing grapes and coffee. I have also grown many a vegetables and even grown flowers. The best part is I have made a boat load money doing this, more than I have made in real life. In case you are not following me, I am talking about FarmVille, a Facebook game by Zynga. Recently I find my interest in this game fading and this has gotten me thinking. What could Zynga do to keep me engaged and also monetize FarmVille while doing the same?

Zynga has a creative team and they are making a lot of money already. There are all kinds of revenue estimates floating around. They vary from 50 million to 200 million USD depending on the source. They have close to 130 million users (with 50 million daily active users) hooked on their games. FarmVille is just one of their games, they have Poker, Mafia Wars, FishVille, YoVille, Cafe World and list keeps growing. Great work by Mark Pincus and his team. While these ideas are specific to FarmVille the spirit could be applied to most other similar games.

Here is how my farm looks like:

Now back to my topic. What kind of features / enhancements would I like to see in FarmVille that also help Zynga increase their revenue without upsetting the spirit of the game. What will help make these suggestions valuable is how much you are able to keep it real while executing on them.

FarmVille Economy

Today, the economy is kind of non evolving. You buy seeds, plant them, they grow and you sell them for a fixed amount. Now, this is quite simple to understand. The question is can we expand this model to add some excitement:

Integrated Sponsorships – Engage sponsors in a more integrated manner. Let’s take an example. I grow flowers. Often these flowers have been fertilized by my friends. What if we could sell premium (fertilized) flowers to a sponsor (say 1-800-Flowers). This could earn me more than just normal selling and also gives an image boost for the sponsor that they buy premium flowers. These are subtle messages and at the same time add another dimension to the game for people like me who are playing.
Sponsor Marketplace – As an extension to the idea above, make a marketplace infrastructure for sponsors to participate. Think of the example above and now imagine that both 1-800-Flowers and Flower.com offer different rates for different flowers w/ varying incentives. These incentives could be more money or better seeds for your next crop for example. The idea is to allow these sponsors to be able to participate
In Game Advertising - In addition to the above, the buyers may ask you to put a sign in your farm visible to your friends that says something like – “I sell my flowers to Flowers.com”. This makes FarmVille an in game advertising platform. Another example here is that Chevron could sponsor a refill if you put their sign board on your farm.

FarmVille Technology

One of the most boring part of the games is waiting for the “little me” to go Plow and then Plant Seeds. It seems to take forever. Some of the times I use a trick to lock the “little me” in some corner and close down exits so that I (the farmer) cannot move any more. This helps me get over the process faster

Upgrading Farm Technology – FarmVille is already doing some things here. You have tractor, harvester and seeder. They are useful tools. However, as you grow in levels, there should be a way for you to upgrade other aspects of farm technology. Can I buy an irrigation/ sprinkler system for my plants? Can I setup a seed research farm? These might be great ways to pull in sponsors. For example, I could buy sprinkler system from Home Depot in virtual reality of course.

FarmVille Social

This is one area where this games does quite a bit already. I can’t think of any major changes here but some minor ones might help increase community participation. One of the things that drives users playing this game is “healthy” competition. This means that you always want to do better than your friends. This keeps you going. The question is how can this be enriched even further. Here are some thoughts:

Farm Parties – There should be a way to host Farm parties. In terms of the people playing, it allows for some more creativity and fun with your friends on FarmVille. For these parties you can make arrangements with various sponsors. Buy beverages and other party items from sponsors and so on. These parties will allow you to invite neighbors and friends. This will be help increase the social interaction and each of your friends would like to host similar parties if not better. This idea needs to be executed well to be really effective but could prove to be a powerful concept.

Overall, these are just some of the ideas I had but you get the overall concept. There needs to be more if you want to increase the life of the game. At some point, this will still become mundane once people have tried out all available options but till the time you are hooked on, it could be made more fun. If you have other great ideas or would like to discuss the ones above, please share your thoughts through the comments.

In case you want to hear Mark’s (Zynga’s CEO) point of view on app economy. You can listen to his Web 2.0 Summit ‘09 address here.

Facebook Connect for Drupal (FConnect) Beta 2 available for download

vishalsood — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:50:17 +0000

NOTE: A newer version of this module is available here.

I hope you have enjoyed the Beta 1 version of the module. It’s time to upgrade both the module and the Facebook experience for your Drupal site.

This release builds on the previous one and provides some exciting new features in addition to ones you have already tried. Here is a quick feature overview:

Login using Facebook Credentials (also in Beta 1)
Configure the Facebook Connect Block (also in Beta 1)
Recent Status Update (*new*)
Allow existing users to associate their site account with Facebook (*new*)
Facebook Share button (*new*)

Recent Status Update

Now, recent update from Facebook will show up in the FConnect Block area on your site like below:

Allow existing users to associate their site accounts.

There is a new Facebook tab in your account settings, where you can now manage your Facebook association. Here is how it looks like:

Facebook Sharing

This version, shows a button for your users to share your articles on Facebook and keeps a track of how many shares have been done so far. Look at the pretty button below. Facebook enabled this feature this week.

Installation Instructions

Installation Instructions are available in my previous post regarding Beta 1 available here.

Very soon I will be releasing the final v 1.0 of this module so let me know if you have any feedback for me. Happy Facebooking with Drupal.

Download

The download link should appear below.

Note: You would need to login to be able to download the module.

If you like this module, please do consider donating to keep the effort going:

Building your first Smooth Streaming Player using SSME

vishalsood — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:24:00 +0000

Building your first Smooth Streaming Player using SSME

vishalsood — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:24:00 +0000

In this post I plan to cover building a very basic Smooth Streaming Player using Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) part of Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit. In other words, building a “Hello World” equivalent for Smooth Streaming Client (“Hello Smooth Streaming”). This post is split into two parts. In the first part, I will be covering how to get basic playback working in a browser window for Smooth Streaming content. This should be really easy as you will see. In the second part, we would add some basic playback controls like Play, Pause, Stop and Volume controls.

Prerequisites

You should either have Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio installed along with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio. You can get more information on this here.

Install the Smooth Streaming Developer Kit available here.

This is not a XAML overview session so basic XAML knowledge is required.

Building a Simple Smooth Streaming Player for Playback

The very first thing I wanted to cover here was just basic playback. There are no controls. All you get is a browser window that shows the video playing.

The below outlines steps to achieve this:

Open Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio.

Go to: File –> New Project.

Chose Visual C# as project Type and then select Silverlight. Choose Silverlight Application, name it SimplePlayer.

In your project go to references and add a reference to Microsoft.Web.Media.Smoothstreaming.dll (available as a part of Player development Kit)

Modify MainPage.xaml as under. Set the SmoothStreamingSource property in XAML to the location of the Smooth Streaming content. Replace <> with the URL of the content (E.g., it will look something like http://example.com/a.isml/Manifest)

Code Snippet

<UserControl x:Class="SimplePlayer.MainPage"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

    xmlns:SSME="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;assembly=Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming"

    mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">

  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">

    <SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement AutoPlay="True" x:Name="SmoothPlayer" SmoothStreamingSource="<>" Grid.Row="0" />

  Grid>

UserControl>

This is all you need to get a basic playback working with Smooth Streaming Media Element.

Adding Playback Controls to your Player

Next, once you have the basic playback working, you may want to add some basic controls like Play/Pause button, Stop Button and Volume Control.

Here is what you will see after completing the steps below:

The UI layout

Here are the pieces we need for this in terms of the layout.

Have portion of the screen, which will display the slider control for volume and Play/Pause and Stop buttons

We need a portion for the Video to display

We need to hook these buttons/slider to SSME

For the overall layout, we are using XAML constructs of Stack Panels. here is how we do it in this example:

Code Snippet

<UserControl x:Class="SimplePlayer.MainPage"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

    xmlns:SSME="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;assembly=Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming"

    mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">

  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">

        <Grid.RowDefinitions>

            <RowDefinition Height="0.95*">RowDefinition>

            <RowDefinition Height="0.05*">RowDefinition>

        Grid.RowDefinitions>

        <SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement AutoPlay="True" x:Name="SmoothPlayer" SmoothStreamingSource="<>" Grid.Row="0" />

        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Grid.Row="1">

            <TextBlock x:Name="Volume" VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Volume" Width="50" />

            <Slider x:Name="VolumeBar" Width="60" Value="{Binding Path=Volume, ElementName=SmoothPlayer, Mode=TwoWay}" />

            <Button x:Name="PlayButton" Width="50" Click="PlayButton_Click" Loaded="PlayButton_Loaded"/>

            <Button x:Name="StopButton" Content="Stop" Width="50" Click="StopButton_Click" />

        StackPanel>

    Grid>

UserControl>

We have a Grid with two rows: the first row is SSME and second is a horizontal Stack Panel that has volume slide and Pause / Stop buttons. This is all we need to get the basic layout.

Linking UI to SSME

The next step after getting the UI is to link it back to SSME. We already know how to play the video in SSME. In this section I would cover how to hook up the buttons and the slider.

Silverlight has a concept of template binding that can be used here. In the case of slider, we have a slider volume UI control and a volume property on SSME. All we need to do here is to tell Silverlight via the XAML to bind the slider value to the volume property on SSME. Here is how we do it:

Code Snippet

<Slider x:Name="VolumeBar" Width="60" Value="{Binding Path=Volume, ElementName=SmoothPlayer, Mode=TwoWay}" />

If you see, all we are doing here is saying that bind the Slider Value to the SmoothPlayer’s Volume Path (or property).

For the Play / Pause and Stop buttons, we take a slightly different approach here:

Code Snippet

<Button x:Name="PlayButton" Width="50" Click="PlayButton_Click" Loaded="PlayButton_Loaded"/>

<Button x:Name="StopButton" Content="Stop" Width="50" Click="StopButton_Click" />

Here we want the following to happen:

For the Play/Pause button, we want to do some actions when the button is loaded and then a different action when it is clicked. For this, we hook these actions to PlayButton_Click and PlayButton_Loaded methods in the MainPage.xaml.cs file

For the Stop button we just need to handle the click so we hook up Click with StopButton_Click method.

In the MainPage.xaml.cs file we need to have these methods and do the needful there. Here is what we are doing in this example:

Note: There are other (better) ways of coding this but for simplicity I have tried to keep it very basic for this example

PlayButton_Loaded

Code Snippet

private void PlayButton_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    //We need to prepopulate the value of Play/Pause button content, we need to check AutoPlay

    switch (SmoothPlayer.AutoPlay)

    {

        case false:

            PlayButton.Content = "Play";

            break;

        case true:

            PlayButton.Content = "Pause";

            break;

    }

}

PlayButton_Click

Code Snippet

private void PlayButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    //Monitor the state of the content to determine the right action to take on this button being clicked

    //and then change the text to reflect the next action

    switch (SmoothPlayer.CurrentState)

    {

        case MediaElementState.Playing:

            SmoothPlayer.Pause();

            PlayButton.Content = "Play";

            break;

        case MediaElementState.Stopped:

        case MediaElementState.Paused:

            SmoothPlayer.Play();

            PlayButton.Content = "Pause";

            break;

    }

}

StopButton_Click

Code Snippet

private void StopButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    //This should simply stop the playback

    SmoothPlayer.Stop();

    //We should also reflect the chang on the play button

    PlayButton.Content = "Play";

}

Summary

In this post, we looked at creating a basic player with common controls for playback of Smooth Streaming Content. Let me know if you have issues or need further help. In subsequent posts I would be diving into adding more features into this player.

The project sample for this example is availble here(SimplePlayer.zip).

Note: These are just samples meant for educational purposes and there is no guarantee conferred on the quality of code

IIS Advanced Logging 1.0 Released

vishalsood — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:11:00 +0000

We proudly announce the release of IIS Advanced Logging 1.0.

IIS Advanced Logging 1.0 includes the following features:

Client-side logging. Advanced Logging builds capabilities into IIS to accept client-side consumption metrics. This provides relevant and important user engagement metrics that your customers will love.

Centralized logging. Advanced Logging provides capabilities to set up a central log farm that collects and logs client-side metrics. This reduces the effort required to collect distributed logs, and consolidated log collection results in more efficient post-processing. I wanted to clarify that this is not for all logging. Note: This is for client-side logging.

Multiple Logs per request. Advanced Logging provides capabilities to filter information relevant to specific purposes by creating multiple logs per request, with each log containing data relevant to the log's purpose. For example, Quality of Service (QoS) data in one log and Analytics data in another. All the post-processing required to distill the information using today's solutions is no longer needed.

Real-time logging. Advanced Logging can extend the platform to support real-time analytics, helping you to provide real-time reports to customers or work with partners to do the same.

Rich/Flexible logging. Advanced Logging does not assume what is important to you. Instead, it provides enough control to specify what fields are important to you, add additional fields with ease, and provide policies around log rollover and request filtering. These capabilities do not exist today. Now you can log any of the HTTP request/response headers, IIS server variables, and client-side fields with simple configuration through the management console.

Application Logging. Making use of the IIS configuration system, Advanced Logging provides capabilities to generate separate logs for sites, applications and so on.

Module Specific Log fields. If you are developing modules for IIS, you can specify custom fields that can be collected in logs.

Log Filtering. Logging now has the ability to filter requests to be logged based on the values in the log fields

You can learn more about the feature by reading the walkthroughs:

Getting started with Advanced Logging

Real-Time Logging

Client Logging

Learn more about the feature on - http://www.iis.net/extensions/AdvancedLogging

We eagerly await your feedback and comments on the Advanced Logging Discussion Forum.

IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 1 Released

vishalsood — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Today, we released IIS Media Services 3.0 that supports both On Demand, Live Smooth Streaming and IIS Advanced Logging. Please refer to the announcement of this release in Chris Knowlton’s blog post for details. As a part of this release, we are very both excited and pleased to announce and release a Beta of IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0. This is intended to aid the development of rich Smooth Streaming players and experiences. This Kit allows you to build players for both On Demand and Live playback with full DVR capabilities, Live Ad Insertion, Multiple Camera Angles and many more such rich functionalities. This Kit is available for download here – Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 1.

The kit includes:

Smooth Streaming Player SDK – This enables developers and designers to build rich Smooth Streaming player experiences. We are providing a .net (Silverlight) based SDK with full XAML support. The core part of this infrastructure is Smooth Streaming Media Element that is similar to Silverlight Media Element if you are already familiar with Silverlight development platform. There is initial documentation of the APIs are available on MSDN.

Push Encoder – This tool allows you to simulate a live stream for testing purposes.

Sample Smooth Streaming Player (built on Smooth Streaming Player SDK) – This is a sample that uses Smooth Streaming Player SDK and enables you to test the IIS Media Services 3.0.

More instructions on using the Sample player and Push Encoder to test Live Smooth Streaming in your environment are available in the walkthrough here.

As I mentioned earlier, the Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) APIs provide an easy interface for developers and designers to create rich Smooth Streaming experiences using the Silverlight platform. These APIs provide support for simple operations like Play, Pause and Stop and also more complex ones like scheduling Ads, selecting and tracking bit-rates for Smooth Streaming playback and many more. Please stay tuned on this blog for samples on how to use these APIs to build experiences. I will start with basic playback and progress on to building richer player applications.

In the meantime here is a high level overview of features that SSME supports today:

Basic Playback controls
- APIs like Play, Pause, Stop, etc.
- Events for Playback and Diagnostics
- Properties to track position, etc.

Advanced Playback support
- DVR support for Live Smooth Streaming
- Trick Play: Slow Motion

Monetization
- Ad Playback integration – scheduling capabilities, tracking Ad progress
- Live Ad Insertion w/ Live Smooth Streaming
- Rich Analytics w/ IIS Advanced Logging

Content Protection – PlayReady integration

XAML support for designers

Selecting Tracks for playback (e.g., restrict the bit-rates available, support multiple camera angles in a single stream, etc.)

Support for progressive download Ads/content

Almost all of the Silverlight Media Element APIs are available for Smooth Streaming w/ SSME

Resources

Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 – Beta 1

API documentation for Smooth Streaming Player SDK

More Information on Smooth Streaming

More Information on Live Smooth Streaming

Hope you have fun using this SDK, the same way we did developing it.

Happy Smooth Streaming.