Expression Encoder and MBR/Smooth

[benwaggoner]

Really, in the end you should plan on keeping an archive of the source for any content you want to be in use for more than 18 months. Even if there isn't a compatibillity issue, there's always updated encoders and new scenarios.

We we are looking at the possibility of getting WMA Voice to work to enable that legacy content. WMV 9 Screen is just so old and crufty that it's really hard to port. Recompresing to VC-1 is a fine alternative (and can actually offer a better experience for screen recording on modern systems).

Here's some details about screen recordings in Silverlight:
http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/21750/

[Björn Starr]

(11-26-2008 12:54 PM)benwaggoner Wrote:  What's your timreframe? Adaptive Streaming will offer a much better experience when it's broadly available next year. Have you checked out:

http://smoothhd.com

Yet?

Do you have any information if an IIS is implicitly needed if you want to to Adaptive / Smooth streaming with the Expression Encoder and Silverlight? (Because I think, I might have read this somewhere.)

At the moment we are streaming our content (not WMV-VC1 yet) through the Akamai CDN to our customers.

As I understand it: For the delivery, we send the stream from our encoder to the akamai entrypoint and the end user gets the stream through the Akamai CDN. In this scenario: where would the IIS fit in?

Kind Regards

Björn

[benwaggoner]

(02-04-2009 04:35 AM)Björn Starr Wrote:  Do you have any information if an IIS is implicitly needed if you want to to Adaptive / Smooth streaming with the Expression Encoder and Silverlight? (Because I think, I might have read this somewhere.)

Smooth Streaming requires the origin server be running IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008.

I've got some details on the workflow at my blog, which includes links to to some good overview docs on Smooth Streaming:
http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/Expression...-Encoding/

And this is probably the best overview here:
http://www.iis.net/extensions/SmoothStreaming

Quote:At the moment we are streaming our content (not WMV-VC1 yet) through the Akamai CDN to our customers.

As I understand it: For the delivery, we send the stream from our encoder to the akamai entrypoint and the end user gets the stream through the Akamai CDN. In this scenario: where would the IIS fit in?

This is for live streaming? We're only deploying on-demand Smooth Streaming with Akamai at this point, not on-demand. Live will still be WMS for a while yet.

But yes, that's the basic workflow. Akamai is running Windows Server 2008 boxes for Smooth Streaming. The workflow is very similar to using a WMS publishing point today.

[Björn Starr]

(02-04-2009 04:35 AM)Björn Starr Wrote:  

(11-26-2008 12:54 PM)benwaggoner Wrote:  What's your timreframe? Adaptive Streaming will offer a much better experience when it's broadly available next year. Have you checked out:

http://smoothhd.com

Yet?

Do you have any information if an IIS is implicitly needed if you want to to Adaptive / Smooth streaming with the Expression Encoder and Silverlight? (Because I think, I might have read this somewhere.)

At the moment we are streaming our content (not WMV-VC1 yet) through the Akamai CDN to our customers.

As I understand it: For the delivery, we send the stream from our encoder to the akamai entrypoint and the end user gets the stream through the Akamai CDN. In this scenario: where would the IIS fit in?

Kind Regards

Björn

Hello again,
For those of you, who have the same question, like I had: I recommend
Alex Zambelli's blog article about the Smooth streaming Technology.

Kind Regards

Björn

[benwaggoner]

(12-01-2008 10:24 AM)Dave Wrote:  Longevity of content has always been one of my concerns here in the land of academia, where content often is created once with the intent of associating it with a course module which then requires to be available for week 'x' term 'y' over the next several years until such a time as a course module is updated and the content replaced.

A lot of earlier academic content has been created using voice and screen CODECs in order to squeeze as much out of the available bandwidth at that time, so currently another hurdle when it comes to Silverlight.

This would appear to differ from a lot of commercial content which would appear to be frequently updated and immune to the problems of archiving, or rather the playback of archived content. Unlike academia though, there is usually some financial gain associated with high turnover of content in that it tends to sell an associated product or service.

Yeah. My rule of thumb is that you should plan to reencode "evergreen" content every 18 months or so to take advantages of improved codecs and delivery mechansims.

Quote:

(12-01-2008 06:48 AM)MatthewQuinn Wrote:  ...At the moment I am talking to lots of content owners and we are all umming and aahing over Flash, Silverlight, SmoothHD, Dynamic Streaming. It seems like there will always be a point where our older archive may have to be presented in its legacy format...

I don't think the problem will just be restricted to Silverlight somehow. Do you think that you would get any assurances from other proprietary formats that their content will still be usable on their platform in seven years time ? Is their track record significantly better for support of legacy content ? Probably not.

Also, note that there hasn't been any reduction in backwards compatibility; WMP plays these files as always. Silverlight is a new platform with a new interactivity model, and wouldn't be able to play any "classic" Javascript/ActiveX based interactivity old course modules would have used. The WMP OCX continues to be required and supported for that (including in Windows 7). So old course materials will be able to work going forward where they've worked in the past.

Quote:Perhaps then a motivator to use standards based formats when it comes to archival content, however then you typically have to take a sacrifice in quality/bandwidth/storage at the time of content creation.

FWIW., Smooth Streaming uses fragmented MPEG-4 file format, which is part of hte ISO MPEG-4 specification. It is possible to convert existing files to it, however seamless stream switching requires files properly encoded, which little existing content will be.