Category Archive

 

With our most recent service updates from our origin server team, we have enabled a new feature in the server called “Dynamic Packaging” that allows you to encode to a single set of standard ISO MP4 files and then dynamically request multiple protocols by simply changing the URL that you use on your content.

Nick Drouin, Program Manager for Dynamic Packaging on the WAMS team, provides a great overview of this feature on his blog here.

This week we introduced a new “preview” feature of Dynamic Packaging to enable support for MPEG-DASH live profile streaming.

For those of you that are not familiar with MPEG DASH, I will give some quick background.  DASH is a universal delivery format that provides end users with the best possible video experience by dynamically adapting to changing network conditions.  It is technically similar to protocols like Smooth and Apple HLS in the sense that it provides a manifest definition for the description of multiple bitrates of video and audio available to a client player application. It is then up to the client player to make decisions at run-time about various factors such as network bandwidth, CPU utilization, screen dimensions, etc… to adjust the streaming experience for each viewer.

The big differentiator with DASH is that it is an international standard that is now controlled by a standards body – the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) – instead of being controlled by Microsoft (Smooth Streaming) or Apple (HLS). Several companies participated in the creation and standardization efforts around MPEG DASH, including Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Samsung, and many more.

For a deeper background on MPEG DASH, I recommend you read the overview from the DASH Industry Forum here.

For Media Services, the plan and roadmap has always been to embrace the industry standards as the evolve and make it simple for customers to get any format to any device.  We see MPEG-DASH as the eventual replacement for all of the features that we have introduced and implemented in the past years with Smooth Streaming.  Over time we will get out DASH support to have feature parity with Smooth, and introduce some even cooler features that are only available to us in an industry standard like DASH .

The implementation of MPEG DASH in Media Services is first coming to the Origin Streaming service through the Dynamic Packaging feature.  This is available now for you to take for a test drive.  While the DASH feature is technically only at “preview” quality, you can access it from your on-demand streaming Origin server in Media Services.

To get started with testing out DASH, follow these simple steps.

1. The first thing you need is a Windows Azure account.  You can get a free 90 day trial account here, or if you are an MSDN subscriber you already have benefits that allow you to use Azure and Media Services. Check out Scott’s blog that describes the new monthly monetary credits available here. You can get up to $150 per month in credits that can be used for Media Services.
2. Next, get a Media Services account. Read through the How to Create a Media Services Account article on Windows Azure to get started.
3. Go to the Azure Management portal by logging into http://manage.windowsazure.com
   
4. Navigate to your Media Services account in the left hand navigation menu and select your account in the main window.
   
5. Click on the SCALE tab at the top of the screen.  In order to test the DASH streaming feature, you will need at least 1 On-Demand Streaming reserved unit (RU).  Drag the slider up to 1 to add to your account.  Note that there is a price associated with this.  Each RU is $199 a month (check current pricing here).  The price is prorated throughout the month, so dialing this up to 1 for a day would be around $7 for the day.  If you have MSDN monthly credits you can apply them to this feature as well.
   
6. It takes about 10 minutes for the Reserved Origin unit to be spun up and deployed. Monitor the portal dashboard tray for status notifications.
7. To test out DASH streaming, you need to have one of the following:  An existing Smooth Streaming Asset, or an existing set of multiple bitrate MP4 files in an Asset that you already encoded.  Alternatively you can upload and encode a full set of MP4 files using the portal as well.   For now, I will assume you have nothing, and walk through the basics.
8. Select the Content tab at the top of the Portal page.
   
9. Click on the Upload button in the command bar.
   
10. Upload a video file in one of the formats that is supported.  Don’t forget to provide a name for the file.
    NOTE: The upload control in the portal uses your web browser and has a limitation of 200 MB.  If you want to import something >200MB, you can use one of the Azure Storage client tools like CloudBerry or others that supports ingesting large files into Azure.  From there, use the option in the Upload dialog box to import the Asset from Storage.
    
11. Once your file is uploaded, kick off an encode in WAMS by pressing the Encode button.  In the Encoder dialog, you can select from one of the pre-defined presets. At this step, you MUST use one of the presets that begins with “H264 Smooth Streaming”.   This will generate multiple bitrate Smooth Streaming files that are GOP aligned and encoded with H264 video and AAC audio.
    
    NOTE: If you are writing code to do this, I encourage you to instead use the “H264 Adaptive Bitrate MP4 Set” presets, as this will generate standard MP4 files instead of Smooth. Currently through the portal you have to use Smooth due to lack of portal support for getting the correct dynamic URL from MP4 file sets. We are working on making that easier soon!
    
12. Depending on the size of your file and duration, it may take awhile for it to encode. Take a break here and go get a nice beverage.
13. After the encode completes, you should refresh the CONTENT page in the portal and see your finished Asset.  From here you can “PUBLISH” the Asset so that it is publicly available on your Origin Streaming server.
    To do this, click the PUBLISH button in the command bar.
    
14. Once your asset is Published, you will now see a URL in the portal under the Publish URL column for your asset.
15. The Published URL you are given back will be for the Smooth Streaming manifest. It will be in the following URL format:{media services account name}.origin.mediaservices.net/{locator ID}/{filename}.ism/Manifest
16. To get back MPEG DASH from the dynamic packaging feature at this step, you just need to change the format of the Manifest being returned.Just add (format=mpd-time-csf) after Manifest and you will get a dynamically generated MPEG-DASH live profile MPD file.

    So the full URL will look like this:
    {media services account name}.origin.mediaservices.net/{locator ID}/{filename}.ism/Manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)
    

17. If you get an error at this point (404, etc), double check that you actually have an On-Demand Origin reserved unit set up.  Make sure that your URL has “origin.mediaservices.net” in the domain name as well.
18. Just so you are aware, here is a quick table of the other supported format URL strings that you can use with Dynamic Packaging: 
    

    Smooth Streaming	/Manifest
    Apple HLS v4	/Manifest(format=m3u8-aapl)
    MPEG DASH (live profile)	/Manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

19. Now you can test your stream in any compliant MPEG-DASH player.  There are a few available out there, with my current favorite being the DASH-IF reference client called DASH.js that is available on GitHub. It currently only works in specific browsers that support the HTML5 Media Source Extensions (MSE).More clients will be available over time this year.  Check out the software section of dashif.org for more details – http://dashif.org/software/

    We also provide basic DASH playback support in Flash through our OSMF player framework plugin. To get started with that player:

    1. Browse Strobe Media Playback and SS Plugin setup page.
    2. Set the src to the URL you got in step 16 for your DASH file.
       
    3. From plugins section select “Microsoft Adaptive Streaming Plugin” from the drop down menu.This will show the dynamic plugin URL.
       
    4. Click “Preview and Update” . This will bring preview player and start playback.

Please take our DASH preview streaming out for a test drive and provide us as much feedback as you can via our MSDN forum web site.

If you don’t currently have a Media Services account, or don’t have the time to walk through my steps above (totally understand), we have also hosted some DASH test streams that are coming from one of our test Origin servers in Azure and are being cached through our friends at Akamai (big thanks to Will Law for setting this up for the benefit of DASH).

First some warnings and credits.  The following test streams are being made available as a best effort by our team and they may not always be available or may change at any point. If they stop working for you on this page – sorry, I can’t guarantee the uptime.  If you need something more stable – follow the steps above in your own account.

These streams are using content that is Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licensed by The Blender.org. (CC) Blender Foundation | mango.blender.org

MPEG DASH TEST Streams (cached via Akamai)

Clear content:

Sintel:

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_MP4_from_WAME/sintel_trailer-1080p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME/sintel_trailer-1080p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_720p_Main_Profile/sintel_trailer-720p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

Elephants Dream:

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/MPTExpressionData01/ElephantsDream_1080p24_IYUV_2ch.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

Big Buck Bunny:

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/MPTExpressionData02/BigBuckBunny_1080p24_IYUV_2ch.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

Tears of Steel:

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/Tears_of_Steel_Smooth_1080p/tears_of_steel_1080p.ism/Manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

 

DASH/CSF+ Common Encryption (CENC) protected content

NOTE: PlayReady license header – only works on devices that support PlayReady decryption of DASH – i.e. TVs, SetTops, future browsers with EME support, etc…

720p, Baseline Profile:

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_720p_Main_Profile_CENC/CENC/sintel_trailer-720p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_720p_Main_Profile_CENC/NoSubSampleAdjustment/sintel_trailer-720p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_720p_Main_Profile_CENC/NoSubSampleAdjustmentNoSenc/sintel_trailer-720p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

1080p, High Profile:

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_CENC/CENC/sintel_trailer-1080p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_CENC/NoSubSampleAdjustment/sintel_trailer-1080p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)

http://wams.edgesuite.net/media/SintelTrailer_Smooth_from_WAME_CENC/NoSubSampleAdjustmentNoSenc/sintel_trailer-1080p.ism/manifest(format=mpd-time-csf)