How to Set Up a Streaming Server, from A to Z
IIS Media Services 4 sits at the delivery point of an end-to-end solution that includes Expression Studio Ultimate with the Expression Encoder 4 (or 4 Pro), the Silverlight Media Framework for content playback, the new Windows Phone 7 for mobile Smooth Streaming playback, and other tools such as the Silverlight Analytics Framework.
Microsoft has chosen to implement one of the draft Pantos specs, meaning that Expression Encoder 4 Pro (EE4 Pro), coupled with IIS Media Services 4, is capable of segmented delivery to a range of devices. From Smooth Streaming format delivery to Silverlight clients on Mac, PC, Linux, and Windows Phone 7 to the iOS devices and on to a variety of other devices, such as the Nokia S60 and Broadcom or Intel set-top boxes, Microsoft strives to cover the vast majority of consumption devices.
In addition, the Smooth Streaming Client (SSC) works as a plug-in to the Silverlight Media Framework, allowing the Silverlight Player to play Smooth Streaming content. The same library (DLL) can also
be used by Internet Explorer 7, 8, or 9. Unfortunately, Windows Media Players 11 and 12 are not capable of using the SSC, unless EE4 Pro has been installed on the machine, since EE4 Pro installs a DirectShow filter that Windows Media Player can access to play back archive Smooth Streaming files. For regular machines, the Silverlight framework needs to be installed.
To distribute Live Smooth Streaming encoded in Expression Encoder, or to stream to iOS devices via ABR, a publishing point must be established. A publishing point is essentially a web server that will deliver the HTTP stream of segments, once EE4 Pro begins live encoding and parses a few of its 2-second segments. Microsoft provides a free web server tool, in the form of Internet Information Services version 7 (IIS 7), that can serve as a publishing point.
Creating the publishing point requires IIS Media Services. If you don’t have IIS Media Services 4, or even IIS 7, don’t panic. The process seemed daunting when I first set up EE4 Pro, but it turned out to be fairly straightforward.
Related Articles
Watch this workshop from Streaming Media East to learn adaptive streaming for Flash, iOS, Android, and Silverlight.
10 Jun 2011
Companies and Suppliers Mentioned