Previously I'm using Amazon AWS, now I'm moving to Microsoft Bizspark program which can use azure for free for certain limitation. I'm new to azure, and I want to setup RTMP live streaming with CDN. I'm using FlowPlayer in my website and OBS software to broadcast my live stream. Can I use Azure CDN with RTMP live streaming ?
Azure Media Services supports ingesting live feeds using RTMP and uses Dynamic Packaging to dynamically transmuxe live streams for delivery in MPEG-DASH, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Apple HLS, or Adobe HDS formats.
You can use Azure Media Player and Wirecast instead of Flow Player and OBS Software. You can follow this article to setup the live streaming.
Related
To clarify: I have a website hosted in Azure. I want to add a 1.5 minute howto video. I can't imagine it will get shown more than a few tens or hundreds a month (maybe a few thousand if the site takes off).
I was planning on using Azure Media Player to play the video.
In relation to this I thought the video would sit in a streaming endpoint.
But this seems an expensive way of doing this. Are there better ways (especially cheaper)?
EDIT: is it possible to host the video elsewhere and have it embedded in Azure?
The cheap way to do this would be to place the video in a blob storage then play it using a web page.
There is a video explaining how to do this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmzns7PgP0A
I would recommended to use Media Service: video-on-demand, content delivery service with an Azure Media Services application in the Azure portal.
Azure Media Services lets you deliver any media, on virtually any device, to anywhere in the world using the cloud. The collection of services provide encoding, live or on-demand streaming, content protection and indexing for video and audio content.
The Windows Azure Media Services platform has four types of services: content uploading, encoding, encrypting content and streaming.
Media Service Pricing: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/pricing/details/media-services/
Additional information : Streaming Videos from Azure ( Blob or Media Services)
I have one interesting scenario using Windows Azure to store video directly from IP cameras.
I know Azure Media Services is amazing to video streaming, but I do not know if it is possible to use Media services to store video from IP secure cameras.
Have someone here experience with that?
Yes it's possible if your camera or your streaming software supports RTMP or Fragmented MP4 as streaming protocol.
How to get things ready:
As you can see in the image below, the entity that stores a live streaming is "Program".
Common live streaming scenario
The following steps describe tasks involved in creating common live streaming applications.
Connect a video camera to a computer. Launch and configure an on-premises live encoder that outputs a multi-bitrate RTMP or Fragmented MP4 (Smooth Streaming) stream. (Like WireCast) This step could also be performed after you create your Channel.
Create and start a Channel.
Retrieve the Channel ingest URL. The ingest URL is used by the live encoder to send the stream to the Channel.
Retrieve the Channel preview URL. Use this URL to verify that your channel is properly receiving the live stream.
Create a program. When using the Azure Management Portal, creating a program also creates an asset. When using .NET SDK or REST you need to create an asset and specify to use this asset when creating a Program.
Publish the asset associated with the program. Make sure to have at least one streaming reserved unit on the streaming endpoint from which you want to stream content.
Start the program when you are ready to start streaming and archiving. Optionally, the live encoder can be signaled to start an advertisement. The advertisement is inserted in the output stream.
Stop the program whenever you want to stop streaming and archiving the event.
Delete the Program (and optionally delete the asset).
All these task can be made by using the Azure Management Portal, .NET SDK, Java SDK, Azure Media Services REST API, etc.
More details here
So, I'm working on an application where admins will be able to upload videos, for others to view on different platforms (mobile devices, computers etc). It is to be hosted on Azure, and I'm having a bit difficulty figuring out if I need to use Media services or simply a CDN.
When does it make sense to use the Media services over simply uploading to a blob and viewing through CDN? What are the advantages of using one over another?
Microsoft Azure CDN pulls content from Azure Media Services streaming server, so you could stream your content from the edge. You don't have to use a CDN if you don't need to deliver content in a large scale at a time. Rather, you could directly streaming content from streaming server offered by Azure Media Services.
The reason you maybe confused is because there are CDN vendors in the market (such as Akamai) offers streaming server capability. But by CDN itself, the edge network was just for caching the bits, not acting like a streaming server.
Cheers,
Mingfei Yan
I have looked through the examples for creating a live stream on Azure, but this leaves you with a url where the stream can be viewed at. I'm wondering if there's anyway to push the live stream to another service (such as twitch.tv or youtube live streaming)?
Currently live streaming doesn't support to push to another service.
Does Windows Azure supports IIS Live Smooth Streaming?
By default the nodes on which our apps. run doesn't support Live Smooth Streaming (also you need to have access to the IIS for live smooth streaming). Instead you can set up a Windows Server 2008 with IIS on a VM role, use Blobs for the content and CDNs for delivery. Also you can use some workers role for encoding. The MS Expression Encoder 4.0 has an API ready to be used for media enconding.
If you have multimedia that you want streamed I would look into Azure CDN http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/cdn/ or Azure Blob Storage and Silverlight as an adaptive smooth streamer http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/streamingazure for your IIS Live Smooth Streaming.
You could check out Microsoft Nimbus Media Service - IIS Smooth Streaming Service in the cloud. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/media-services/
I am a PM in IIS team (Azure Media Service). We launched Nimbus a month before and currently it is in preview. You could apply through the link above to get early access.
Doing a quick google search:
http://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Azure+Smooth+Streaming
Steve Marx, PM for windows Azure has two blog posts you may want to have a look at.
http://blog.smarx.com/posts/publishing-adaptive-streaming-video-from-expression-encoder-to-windows-azure-blobs
http://blog.smarx.com/posts/smooth-streaming-with-windows-azure-blobs-and-cdn
Both have been very helpful to me.
Steve is #smarx on twitter. I'm sure he'll be able to help you.