“New cloud-based Windows Azure Media Services is designed to make creating, managing and delivering media to any device easier than ever by offering a comprehensive set of ready-to-use first- and third-party media technologies. [...]  Taking advantage of the worldwide Windows Azure cloud infrastructure, Windows Azure Media Services gives content providers and media partners the nearly unlimited capacity of the cloud to cost-effectively handle a huge volume of digital media and make it available in the format that customers want, when they want it. Windows Azure Media Services’ ready-to-use services allow customers to simplify the creation of complex media workflows built on Microsoft Media Platform and third-party technologies.”

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/apr12/04-16NABPR.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/04/16/announcing-windows-azure-media-services.aspx

In addition to Windows Azure Media Services, we announced in detail our support for the MPEG-DASH standard across the Microsoft Media Platform:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msmediaplatform/archive/2012/04/16/microsoft-announces-support-for-mpeg-dash-in-microsoft-media-platform.aspx

Finally, in my last blog post I mentioned the Smooth Streaming Client Porting Kit, a C++ source code package for implementing Smooth Streaming in TVs, STBs and other embedded devices. Here are more details about SSPK licensing:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mediaplatform/sspk.aspx

So it should come as no surprise that as popularity of Smooth Streaming grew we started looking into extending the reach of Smooth Streaming (and PlayReady as its premium content companion) to other client platforms and devices too.

First came Smooth Streaming Client for Windows Phone, essentially a variation of Smooth Streaming Client for Silverlight but adapted for the specific features and constraints of the Windows Phone OS.

Next came Smooth Streaming Client Porting Kit, a device and platform independent implementation of Smooth Streaming client that can be ported by licensees to any device and platform. This commercially licensable package contains C++ source, hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and platform abstraction layer (PAL) interfaces, and DRM interfaces designed to plug into the PlayReady Device Porting Kit. The SSPK is primarily targeted at manufacturers of connected TVs, set-top boxes (STB), Blu-Ray players and various other embedded devices.

Late last year Xbox LIVE launched a whole new series of TV and video apps, such as Hulu Plus, YouTube, Comcast Xfinity, VEVO, Verizon FiOS TV and many others. What you probably didn’t know is that over 75% of the new media apps launched on Xbox LIVE are powered by Smooth Streaming and PlayReady. The catalyst for these new experiences is the Xbox LIVE Application Development Kit (ADK) which significantly accelerates development of rich media applications for Xbox 360. At the heart of the ADK are Smooth Streaming Client and MMP Player Framework, specially developed for the Xbox by the IIS Media Services team and our old partner Vertigo Software.

Finally, last month we announced the availability of Smooth Streaming Client SDK (beta) for Windows 8 Consumer Preview, together with a beta of Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro-style Applications. The new SDK and framework allow developers to build Metro-style, touch-enabled apps for Windows 8 (x86/x64/ARM) with support for Smooth Streaming and PlayReady DRM, while utilizing any of the supported development languages and constructs such as HTML5, Javascript, XAML, C# and C++. Make sure to check out this post for a step-by-step guide to building your first Metro media app.

We intend to continue broadening Microsoft Media Platform’s reach in the coming months to other popular platforms such as iOS, Flash and Android too. Over the next several weeks you can expect to see more detailed information published regarding Smooth Streaming Client Porting Kit licensing, MPEG-DASH support and availability of Smooth Streaming Client SDK for iOS.

And of course, stay tuned for exciting new announcements at NAB Show 2012. ;)

November 9, 2011

Player Framework version 1.0 for HTML5 is released to Codeplex. Download it here.

This new player framework implements basic video playback functionality using the HTML5 Video tag, and features JavaScript API and control UI consistent with the Silverlight version of the Player Framework. For a complete list of features visit http://playerframework.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Features.

November 8, 2011

IIS Media Services version 4.1 is released to Microsoft Download Center. Install it via the Web Platform Installer, or download it separately for x86 and x64 platforms.

This release adds support for REST services APIs for management of publishing points as well as performance improvements for both on demand and live scenarios. The recently released Expression Encoder 4 SP2 makes use of the new APIs so that one can easily manage publishing points directly from within Expression Encoder. For more information on the new features visit http://blogs.iis.net/akucer/archive/2011/11/09/iis-media-services-4-1-released.aspx.

November 2, 2011

Player Framework version 2.6 for Silverlight and Windows Phone is released to Codeplex. Download it here.

This release includes significant performance improvements, updated support for WP 7.5 “Mango”, the latest version of the Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME), and several new features and bug fixes.

November 2, 2011

Expression Encoder 4 Service Pack 2 (SP2) is released to Microsoft Download Center. Download it here.

New features include support for Intel QSV GPU-accelerated encoding, 1 and 2-pass VBR H.264 encoding, more AAC audio options, SRS audio encoding, built-in management of IIS publishing points, live video cropping, live multi-bitrate Windows Media encoding, etc. SP2 also removes the screen capture limit in the free version of the Encoder. You can find a detailed list of features in this blog post.

The Expression Encoder team has also updated their GPU encoding recommendations. Note that H.264 codec support is still only available in the commercial Pro edition of Expression Encoder.

October 26, 2011

Content Manager version 1.1 is released to Microsoft Download Center. Download it here.

This release fixes compatibility issues with Windows Vista and Windows 7, and provides additional code samples.

The open-source Microsoft Media Platform Content Manager pulls together an end-to-end video workflow that allows you to create live streaming events, transcode on-demand content, manage and publish video, edit video, and insert mid-roll advertisements. Watch the MIX11 session on Content Manager for an overview.

October 17, 2011

Enhanced Movies 1.0 Beta is the latest addition to the Microsoft Media Platform family of frameworks. Download it here.

Microsoft Media Platform Enhanced Movies provides a framework for delivery of rich interactive movie experiences that go far beyond any streaming experience today. The “enhanced movies” feature set enables studios and distribution houses to package HD movies with special features, multiple languages, interactive games, social media, advertising and more — as complete, downloadable, rights-protected applications.

The beta release provides a plug-in for the Player Framework which enables offline playback of video by implementing a media downloader and Smooth Streaming cache.

October 6, 2011

Video Editor (f.k.a. Silverlight Rough Cut Editor) version 2.0 is released to MSDN. Download it here.

The new version requires Silverlight 5.

New to MMP Video Editor? Take it for a test drive using our demo deployment hosted on Windows Azure:  http://videoeditor.cloudapp.net/

August 31, 2011

Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) is released to Microsoft Download Center. Download it here.

New media features include GPU-accelerated H.264 video decoding, low-latency sound effects, variable speed playback (trick play) support, and remote control and media keys support. For a complete list of new Silverlight 5 RC features check out http://10rem.net/blog/2011/09/04/the-big-list-of-whats-new-or-improved-in-silverlight-5.

Silverlight 5 runtime is now also available as a native 64-bit plugin for 64-bit browsers on Windows and Mac operating systems.

Curious about SL5 RTW release dates? Stay tuned because it is coming very soon…

On Thursday, March 24th, I’ll be participating in a roundtable web event titled “Transcoding Methodology 101″ hosted by Streaming Media. Joining me will be Kevin Louden (Telestream), Charlie Good (Wowza) and Jon Robbins (Rhozet). The live event is scheduled to start at 11 am Pacific Time.

You can register for the web event here:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/webevents/roundtable/24mar2011/mic6

 *

Microsoft’s annual web developer/designer conference MIX is taking place the same week as the annual NAB show this year – also in Las Vegas. MIX 2011 is taking place April 12-14 at the Mandalay Bay hotel, while NAB 2011 is happening April 11-14 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Microsoft’s media platform will be represented at both events, and I will be present at both too.

Here is the current list of MIX sessions:
http://live.visitmix.com/mix11

I will be presenting a session titled “Introducing Microsoft Media Platform” in which I will give an overview of Microsoft’s media technologies and frameworks and recent releases. Other noteworthy media related sessions will be:

“Introducing MMP Content Manager” by Steven R. Woodward (Microsoft)
“MMP Video Editor” by Jason Suess (Microsoft)
“MMP Player Framework: Past, Present, Future” by Tim Greenfield (Vertigo Software)
“Introducing MMP Audience Insight” by Eric Schmidt (Microsoft)
“Behind the Scenes of Channel 9 Live at MIX” by Nic Fillingham (Microsoft)
“5 Things You Need To Know To Start Using <video> and <audio> Today” by Nigel Parker (Microsoft)

It’s not too late to register for MIX 2011! Visit http://live.visitmix.com/Registration and register today!

So in the meantime, I highly recommend using the IIS.net Media Content Map to assist you in finding useful IISMS deployment how-to docs:

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1017/iis-media-services-content-map/

After PDC 2010 in November which focused on new web technologies (e.g. IE9, HTML5, WP7), we hosted a special event in December called Silverlight Firestarter which focused exclusively on Silverlight. Scott Guthrie announced some of the new features going into Silverlight 5. Among the many features, the ones most interesting to media developers were:

• Support for GPU-accelerated H.264 decoding, intended to make H.264 video perform better on low powered computers and increase battery life on laptops and netbooks.
• Variable speed playback, also known as “trick play”, which will allow you to fast forward and rewind videos as well as play them back at up to 2x speed while maintaining the audio pitch. This is a feature particularly useful for e-learning, as well as suffering through boring corporate training videos. :) Note that some aspects of trick play, such as rew/ffwd, have already been implemented in the Silverlight Media Framework for Smooth Streaming videos.
• OS power scheme awareness. This will allow you to watch long videos in Silverlight without worrying about your computer going to sleep during the season finale of “Dexter”.
• Remote control support for media scenarios. I presume this will include support for Media Center remote controls.
• Advanced DRM management. I don’t know much about this, but I’m guessing it has to do with supporting seamless key rotations.

Other noteworthy SL5 features include 64-bit support and improved GPU-accelerated graphics APIs.

Around the same time we shipped Windows Phone 7 which uses Silverlight as one of its two app development platforms (the other one being XNA). WP7 support ended up being one of the main features of the Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 (aka SSME) too. Vishal Sood wrote a great post about encoding video for Windows Phone 7. The biggest difference between encoding for WP7 versus the desktop is WP7 video driver’s current lack of support for mid-stream resolution changes. What this effectively means is that all streams in a Smooth Streaming asset delivered to WP7 must be encoded at the same resolution. We hope to fix this in future WP7 updates, but for now we have to live with it.

2010 also saw the release of IIS Media Services 4.0. The most exciting new feature of this release is support for dynamic repackaging and delivery of Smooth Streaming assets (VOD and live) to Apple iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Apple iOS devices support HTTP Live Streaming, an HTTP adaptive streaming technology developed by Apple and based on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream file format. Because both Microsoft and Apple support H.264/AAC codecs, it is possible to repackage (remux) Smooth Streaming H.264/AAC assets into Apple HTTP Live assets by simply changing the container formats, without a need for re-encoding the video and audio streams. The IIS Media Services 4.0 release also supports live DVR features, AES encryption, archiving and B-frame encoding (H.264 Main/High Profile) for iPhone4 and iPad.

Apple has documented some of their own encoding best practices for iOS devices, though frankly, they seem a little on the conservative side. I’ve seen many online reports of iPhone4/iPad being able to handle H.264 High Profile at 1280×720, so it seems strange that Apple would limit their recommendations to just Main Profile at 640×360 (especially considering iPad’s display resolution is 1024×768). If you have experience with streaming to iOS devices and would like to share your encoding settings and feedback, please leave a comment. Even better – if you work for Apple and your focus is HTTP Live Streaming, send me an e-mail.

IIS Media Services 4.0 also includes support for low-latency streaming which can bring down the typical Live Smooth Streaming end-to-end latency to under 2 seconds. This requires the latest Smooth Streaming Client version and a low-latency compatible realtime video encoder, such as the ones made by Allegro DVT, Digital Rapids, Elemental, Envivio and Inlet. (Did I forget your company? Let me know.)

Though not officially a part of the IIS Media Services package, the IIS Media team also recently released IIS Transform Manager 1.0 alpha, another IIS extension which allows you to automate your transcoding/transmuxing workflow. The most recent public release is just an alpha, but shows a lot of promise. It features integration with Microsoft Expression Encoder (for transcoding to WMV, MP4 and Smooth) and offline transmuxing (repackaging) of Smooth VOD assets into Apple HTTP adaptive assets. The final release, coming soon, will also feature support for distributed transcoding, DRM packaging tasks and – my favorite – MP4-to-Smooth tasks. The last one is particularly exciting because it will allow you to encode to Smooth Streaming using any H.264 encoder regardless of its lack of Smooth Streaming file support. For example, you’ll be able to encode videos with the awesome open-source x264 encoder and automatically convert its MP4 output files into Smooth Streaming assets as a background task.

Completing the slew of recent media releases are:

• Silverlight Media Framework 2.3
  • New SMF features include support for WP7 and SSME 1.5.
• Silverlight Rough Cut Editor 1.0 SP1
  • If you have never seen RCE in action, do yourself a favor and check out my colleague Jason Suess’ excellent session from last year’s MIX. It’s an incredible tool which any broadcaster or content publisher can benefit from.
• Native Extensions 1.0 for Microsoft Silverlight
  • While not necessarily directly related to media, NESL provides features in out-of-browser Silverlight apps that aren’t available in the browser, such as integration with Windows sensors, access to portable devices, webcam capture/encoding/archiving, speech recognition and Windows 7 taskbar integration.

Last, but certainly not the least, stay tuned for the upcoming Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 service pack which will enable GPU-accelerated H.264 encoding using NVIDIA CUDA technology. Expression Encoder Pro’s H.264 compression engine is powered by MainConcept, and the new acceleration feature will be powered by MainConcept’s CUDA H.264 Encoder SDK. SP1 is scheduled for release in Q1 2011.

Released this month:

• Expression Studio 4, which of course includes Expression Encoder 4.
• IIS Media Services 4.0 Beta
• Smooth Streaming Format SDK 1.0 Beta 2
• IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.0, also known as Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME), formerly known as IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit
• Silverlight Media Framework 2.0 RC1

Before I dive into more details about those products, I’d also like to highlight a few case studies we recently published, all of them focused on the Silverlight-based 2010 Winter Olympics experiences built for NBC, CTV, NRK and France TV:

• NBC Universal (United States)
• CTV (Canada)
• NRK (Norway)
• France TV (France)

Some of the statistics are quite impressive, such as the number of peak concurrent users (181 thousand Americans, 134 thousand Canadians), total amount of video consumed (7.2 million hours in Canada), or the average minutes viewed over the 2 weeks of Olympics (nearly 2 hours per unique user in Canada). If you’re interested in the business side of video streaming, the value proposition of Silverlight and Smooth Streaming, and monetization data – I recommend you check out these case studies.

Expression Encoder 4

First change you might notice is that the pay version of the product is now called Expression Encoder 4 Pro, to differentiate it from the free version available for download. The good news is that the basic free version now includes Smooth Streaming (VOD) encoding, but you’ll still need to shell out $49.95 to get:

• H.264/AAC encoding (now courtesy of MainConcept H.264 SDK)
• Additional decoders for input types (MPEG2, MPEG/TS Splitter, Dolby Digital AC3, MP4 and H.264/AAC)
• Live IIS Smooth Streaming support
• Unlimited screen capture
• Digital Rights Management (PlayReady) integration

In case you missed it hidden there in the middle of the list, let me repeat: Expression Encoder 4 Pro supports LIVE Smooth Streaming! That was by far the feature most frequently requested by users, and the Encoder team listened and delivered. Live encoding in EE4 works and scales remarkably well, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to run it on any computer with less than 8 CPU cores. Video encoding is a CPU intensive process and when you have to encode multiple bitrates in realtime there’s no such thing as too much CPU. With 2 cores you can probably manage to churn out 1 bitrate up to SD resolution; with 4 cores about 2 bitrates up to SD; with 8 cores about 3-4 bitrates up to SD or 720p; with 16 cores about 7-8 bitrates up to 720p, etc.

The question I expect I’ll get asked most frequently about EE4 is: “OK, now that EE4 can encode Live Smooth Streaming for $49.95 on any PC hardware, why would I pay thousands of dollars for professional products like Digital Rapids Stream, Inlet Spinnaker or Envivio 4Caster?” My answer would go something like this: EE4, while fully capable of encoding Live Smooth Streaming, is an entry-level encoding product. It’s to professional encoding products what Windows Movie Maker is to Adobe Premiere Pro. Is it good enough for encoding a high school basketball game once a week? Absolutely. But would I use Expression Encoder to deliver 2 weeks of Olympics live video to hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world? Probably not. To use yet another analogy: Anybody can buy a stock PC, install Windows Server 2008 on it and call it a server. But does that make industry standard HP ProLiant servers obsolete? Hardly. Companies like Inlet, DR and Envivio have invested years and millions in building reliable professional encoding products which are designed and tested to run 24/7 in broadcast-type environments. So when you pay top dollar for their products, you’re not so much paying for raw codecs as you’re paying for guaranteed uptime and professional support. They cost a lot of money because they do what they do very well.

IIS Media Services 4.0 Beta

Though only a beta, this new release of IIS MS 4.0 delivers one particularly awesome feature: it can deliver Smooth Streaming H.264/AAC content to Apple “iDevices” such as the iPhone and iPad. How does it do that? Both formats support H.264 video and AAC audio; Smooth Streaming is based on MP4 (ISO Base Media) file format, while Apple Live HTTP Streaming is based on MPEG-2 TS file format. Smooth Streaming tends to use short GOP chunks (2 seconds), while Apple HTTP streaming uses long GOP (10 second) chunks. Therefore, converting between the 2 formats merely requires transmuxing A/V streams from one format to another, and this is exactly what IISMS 4.0 does: it dynamically transmuxes Smooth Streaming format into Apple’s Live HTTP Streaming format. No re-encoding.

Associated with this release are also 2 other IIS media releases:

• Smooth Streaming Format SDK 1.0 Beta 2 – provides documentation, tools, and samples you can use to multiplex video and audio bitstreams into on-demand and live Smooth Streaming output. In addition, the SDK supports the encryption of content using Microsoft PlayReady DRM. Note that this SDK doesn’t include video/audio codecs – it expects already compressed A/V samples.
• Transform Manager 1.0 Alpha – provides simple integrated video encoding and batch conversion of video files to the IIS Smooth Streaming format and the MPEG-2 TS streaming format supported by Apple devices.

For more information check out the following blog posts:
http://blogs.iis.net/chriskno/archive/2010/06/10/iis-media-services-4-0-beta-is-now-available.aspx
http://blogs.iis.net/chriskno/archive/2009/12/01/faqs-on-using-iis-smooth-streaming-with-the-apple-iphone.aspx
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/854/live-smooth-streaming-for-iis-7—apple-http-live-streaming/

Smooth Streaming Client 1.0 and Silverlight Media Framework 2.0 RC1

SMF (popularly called “Smurf”) 2.0 introduces a whole new, more modular architecture with an extensive plug-in API for 3rd-party developers and partners. It also enables developers to selectively exclude libraries that aren’t needed in their projects in order to avoid unnecessary file size increases. The v2 framework will include plug-ins for Timed Text (DFXP), URL frame linking, a metadata framework, support for the Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework, support for multiple audio tracks, improved bitrate monitoring, support for Silverlight 4 global styling, a JavaScript API, a logging plug-in, and a host of other new features. It also takes advantage of the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in Silverlight 4.

The Smooth Streaming component of SMF is known as the Smooth Streaming Media Element (pronounced “Smee”, like that pirate from Peter Pan). SSME previously shipped as beta under the name “Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit” but has since been renamed to just Smooth Streaming Client. The 1.0 release (compatible with SMF 2.0) comes with rich online documentation and code samples.

• Silverlight availability on Broadcom and Intel systems-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, which will enable set-top-box manufacturers to run Silverlight applications on their devices
• IIS Media Services 4.0 with support for Smooth Streaming over multicast networks, transmuxing support for similar HTTP-based adaptive streaming formats such as the one for Apple iPhone/iPad, low latency delivery, and Smooth Streaming H.264 DRM (PlayReady AES) support – beta availability in Q3 2010
• Silverlight Media Framework 2 with a new, more modular architecture featuring an extensive plug-in API for 3rd-party developers and partners
• Silverlight Analytics Framework for integrating business intelligence analytics into Silverlight applications
• Expression Encoder 4 with support for Live Smooth Streaming

Among other news, we’ve announced that Silverlight plug-in adoption has reached 60% globally. On Tuesday we officially launched Visual Studio 2010 and on Thursday we released Silverlight 4, a mere 3 years since our original release of Silverlight 1.0! Remember, Visual Studio 2010 lets you develop Silverlight applications not just for the desktop, but also for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices. Make sure to install the latest Silverlight 4 runtime here: http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/

Full coverage of Microsoft’s Silverlight announcements at NAB 2010:  http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/microsoft-silverlight-recap-at-nab-2010/

The demo that generated a lot of buzz at the Microsoft booth and one that’s very close to my heart was the demo of Live 3D HD video streaming powered by IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight. We partnered with TVN Group, Inlet Technologies, Level(3) Communications and THX to deliver a compelling demo showing that Smooth Streaming can be used to efficiently deliver stereoscopic 3D video over the Internet to multiple screens and display technologies.

TVN Group set up a stereoscopic camera rig in a radio station in Hannover, Germany (the radio station was chosen because it operates 24/7, allowing us to have an active live feed in Las Vegas even when it’s nighttime in Germany). They converted the two 1080i feeds into a single 1080i25 side-by-side feed which was then fed into an Inlet Spinnaker 7100 encoder. The encoder produced Smooth Streaming output at 4 quality levels: bottom one at 400×224 @ 500 kbps, top one at 1280×720 @ 3 Mbps. The streams were published to an IIS7 origin server on Level3′s network and carried by Level3 to their edge servers in the United States where we consumed them at our NAB booth (over the open Internet; we didn’t use a dedicated connection).

At our booth we demonstrated 2 playback scenarios:

1. Our regular demo pods were running a Silverlight player application (built on Silverlight Media Framework) inside the browser and were connected to conventional LCD displays. Using pixel shader effects in Silverlight (the code for which I hope to make available in the near future) we dynamically converted the side-by-side stereoscopic video into a red-cyan anaglyph image, viewable using widely available anaglyph glasses such as these. We also demonstrated Silverlight’s ability to display only a 2D “mono” version of the stream (left-eye only view), as well as the ability to dynamically switch between different anaglyph methods (monochrome and color).
2. In our living room area, we had another PC running the same Silverlight application out-of-browser as well as THX Media Director software. This PC was connected via HDMI to a 3D-ready 120Hz Panasonic plasma display (THX certified) equipped with active shutter glasses. With a click of a button, the Silverlight application would switch to side-by-side full screen view and send a command to the THX software which in turn would inject appropriate 3D metadata into the HDMI output stream, instructing the HDMI 1.4a compatible TV to automatically switch to frame-compatible side-by-side 3D mode. The TV would then deliver the video as frame sequential 120Hz video to the active shutter glasses, creating a superior 3D video experience.

We didn’t make any announcement at NAB regarding support for 3D video yet, but our demo (hopefully) showed that Smooth Streaming is a great way to deliver stereoscopic 3D video over the Internet to a variety of displays while fully utilizing the power and scalability of HTTP adaptive streaming.

Two videos of me talking about the 3D demo:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/NAB-Silverlight-in-3D/
http://www.newmediawebinars.com/tv/the-digital-scene/nab/stereoscopic-video-on-the-web-with-microsoft-silverlight-nab/

Microsoft has just released a detailed case study of the SNF project describing the partners, products, tools and workflow used to deliver the final solution. You can check it out here:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006602

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/808/sunday-night-football-live-in-hd-with-microsoft-silverlight-3-and-iis-smooth-streaming/

I believe a similar case study is currently underway for the NBC/CTV/NRK Vancouver Olympics project, but it’ll probably be a few months before it’s released.

A year ago we began working with NBC and CTV on putting together the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics video site, later adding Norway’s NRK as another customer. We teamed up with a number of partners to get the job done:

• iStreamPlanet – video encoding services and hosting operations
• Akamai – edge content delivery
• Vertigo – Silverlight player design and development
• Delta Tre – content management systems, ad insertion, realtime data integration, player development, site integration
• Inlet – live video encoders
• Rhozet, Anystream (Grab Networks) - offline video (VOD) encoders
• Switch Communications – datacenter hosting
• SouthWorks.net – Rough Cut Editor design and development
• DoubleClick – ad serving
• Signiant – content distribution software
• Conviva – usage tracking and analytics
• Wintellect – origin health monitoring and maintenance
• Intel, Dell – server hardware

As you can tell just from the list of partners, this was a hugely complex project. Despite the Winter Olympics being smaller in scale than Summer Olympics, I’d estimate that this project was about 2-3 times more complex than the Beijing 2008 Olympics project due to the additional technical challenges we decided to take on in order to raise the bar in online video streaming.

In order to reduce some of the complexity we also made an early decision to deliver everything exclusively in Smooth Streaming and Silverlight, without a WMS/WMP fallback option. Though I’m sure some critics will be quick to assert such a decision was meant to force greater Silverlight adoption, the truth is less political and more practical: Trying to encode all videos for both Windows Media and Smooth Streaming (let alone additional formats such as MP4/H.264) would’ve probably doubled or tripled the cost and severely impacted the amount of functionality we were able to add to the client.

If you follow Smooth Streaming developments, you’ve probably heard of the Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit and the Silverlight Media Framework. Both of these frameworks and their underlying Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) were in fact designed for the Olympics project and first put to test on NBC Sunday Night Football 6 months ago. And while on the client side the Olympics player is actually quite similar to the SNF player (aside from the much improved rew/ffwd/slo-mo features and the lack of multi-camera angles), the chief difference between the Olympics and SNF is actually on the backend. One word: automation.

From a video operations standpoint, SNF was very much a manual operation. We created publishing points and started encoders by hand – and then stopped them 4 hours later. When you’re doing only one game a week, you can afford to do that with just a few people. But when you have to run 20-30 events per day, as many as dozen of those simultaneously, for 2 weeks straight – it’s absolutely unthinkable to try to run everything by hand. You’d need an army of engineers just to keep things running smoothly.

Enter iStreamPlanet. Our encoding service partner took it upon themselves to build a fully automated live video encoding service for the Olympics. This involved: turning on H.264 multicast decoders (our source streams arrive from Vancouver as H.264 multicast streams over dedicated OC-12) and tuning them to the right channels; routing the decoded video to the available Inlet Spinnaker HD encoders; creating multiple publishing points on IIS origin servers; starting publishing points and encoders; stopping encoders and publishing points; moving VOD archives to expected locations. Having such a service allowed Delta Tre, our CMS provider, to remotely schedule events without any human involvement required. For a young technology such as Smooth Streaming this is a big deal because it proves it’s possible to scale Smooth Streaming to large professional broadcast environments.

Another huge development and step forward for this project was the creation of the Rough Cut Editor, a soon to be publicly available “light touch” editor for Smooth Streams. The RCE allows editing of Smooth Streaming sources, both on-demand and live (!), without any re-encoding whatsoever. The concept is remarkably simple: if a Smooth Streaming manifest is like a playlist of video/audio fragments which live in the cloud, then editing, merging and appending multiple Smooth Streaming sources should be as simple as re-arranging entries in a manifest. Since Smooth Streaming video is just a series of fragments and each 2-sec fragment must be downloaded separately, it’s completely irrelevant whether fragments are downloaded/played in a sequential or non-sequential order – the end result plays equally smooth either way. This is something that hasn’t been possible with Windows Media or any other streaming media technology until now. It’s a total game-changer.