Scott Hanselman

Earlier this year I posted on Installing and Setting Up and Encoding for IIS 7 Smooth Streaming and Silverlight. The general idea was to show folks that it's actually pretty easy to setup Smooth Streaming for Silverlight. Of course, not everyone uses Silverlight, and lots of folks (myself included) have iPhones and iPads.

I've long been singing the praises of IIS7. If you're on IIS6, get off it. IIS7 is the #1 reason to get on Windows Server 2008R2, IMHO. Mostly because of the crapload of awesome (CoA) that keeps coming out of the IIS team. Many of these modules aren't on the radar of the average developer. I think that Web Platform Installer helps some, but still, I'd like to get the word about some of this free stuff like the Web Farm Framework, the all new FTP 7.5, Bit Rate Throttling, and my favorite, Application Request Routing (which I use in my robot).

Anyway, last week IIS released IIS Media Services 4.0 that you can download now. It's free if you have IIS on your machine. They also released a number of things this summer like the Transform Manager 1.0 Alpha.

Getting existing Video from IIS7 to iOS devices elegantly

Why do I care? Well, I'm sitting here looking at an IPhone 3G, an iPhone 4 and an iPad on my desk. Many of your customers have these devices. How do you get video to them, cleanly, quickly, easily and from a single source file?

Turns out there's features in IIS7 and Media Services that target iOS directly. Yes, it's true. Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria. Get your snowballs out, hell has frozen over and the slopes look sweet.

On-Demand Encoded Video for iOS and Silverlight

First, I've got this file on my hard drive called ScottGuHDTest1. It's a picture in picture (PIP) test that ScottGu and I did a while ago while looking into new ways to deliver educational video content. Consider this my stock video for this example.

If I want to deliver this content to the web over Silverlight Adaptive Smooth Streaming PLUS I want it to look great on an iPhone or iPad regardless of bandwidth, and I want it all done automatically, I'll need these things.

• IIS7 - If you Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 you already have this.
• You may need to check a box under Programs and Features. Easiest way is to install all this stuff with the Web Platform Installer and it'll enable IIS for you.
• IIS Media Services 4
• IIS Transform Manager 1.0 Alpha
• Expression Encoder 4 - You can use the Trial version for VC-1 content, but you'll need the Pro version for H.264. I think it's $199.

For existing videos or videos you're making on a regular basis, the idea is that you'll just drop them in a folder and a task will automatically kick off. You have total control over everything, to be clear, but for the out of the box example, I'm going to drop my ScottGu WMV into a folder and two things will pop out:

• A folder with HTML page with a Silverlight media player that supports Smooth Streaming. The ScottGu video will be encoded in various bit rates and be all set for adaptive Smooth Streaming
• A folder with MPEG-2 TS format files with .m3u8 manifests that conform to the Apple Live Streaming Protocol.

Here's what you do. Once you've installed the Transform Manager, it'll show up in your IIS Manager as a node. You'll setup account credentials (an account with some power, as it'll need to run stuff and copy files into IIS folders. I used my own. Naughty.)

Now, go to Job Templates and notice there are a bunch of built-in templates. You can create whatever you want to encode video in whatever way makes you happy.

I double-clicked on them and checked all the paths and stuff. You'll need to change the templatePath property to decide on your input and output directories.

I have my input folder here, in c:\inetpub\media\Transform Manager, and there's sub-folders beneath that as seen in this screenshot. Notice that tasks can do multiple things, so mine takes an input file and "fans out" into multiple tasks.

If I drop my ScottGu file in, a task immediately starts up (it's watching the folder) and I can see the progress from the IIS manager. Here it is in the middle of encoding.

The Transforms Manager has lots of interesting parameters that you can set, basically using simple template expansion. It'll make a folder with the Date and Time and a Unique Number, but again, you control all this.

Now I have two folders, one for the Silverlight format...

...and one for the Apple format:

I'll add a HTML page for an iOS device to hit. NOTE: You'll be pointing the iPhone/iPad to this m3u8.ism file and it'll decide what streams to watch:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>iPhone page</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Encoded stream</h1>
        <video width="640" 
               height="480" 
               src="ScottGu720pTest1-m3u8-aapl.ism/manifest(format=m3u8-aapl).m3u8" 
               poster="ScottGuSplashPage.png" 
               autoplay="true" 
               controls="true" >Live</video> 
    </body>
</html>

I've also added splashscreen "poster" that's just a PNG frame from the video. Here's a photograph of my iPhone 3G, iPad and iPhone 4 with the video...

...and here it is in Silverlight. Note the chart showing the smooth streaming bandwidth adjusting.

Cool, that was easy. How about LIVE video streaming to both iPhone/iPad clients and Web Browsers?

Live Streaming Video from IIS7 to iOS devices and Silverlight

Doing LIVE Streaming video is pretty easy also. You start with IIS Media Services 4 and Expression Encoder 4 Pro. The encoder will dynamically transcode the incoming video into the right format for outputting to Apple Devices as well as Silverlight clients. It'll also archive the video for later.

Start by selecting Live Smooth Streaming, and create a Publishing Point.

Make sure to select "Enable Output to Apple Mobile Digital Devices" and also Enable iOS 3.0 Compatibility for older phones.

In the Encoder I can also add multiple live sources (multiple cameras, USB, Firewire, whatever) as well as recorded sources (we'll be right back, advertisements, whatever) and then cue them up appropriately.

Fire up Encoder 4 and select Live Broadcasting Project.

Add a Live Source (I used my Webcam, although Firewire and other video sources work great), then select the H.264 Encoding you want. I chose "H.264 IIS Smooth Streaming iPad Wifi"

Under Output, enter in your Publishing Point. This is a file on your IIS server. Mine was http://hexpower7/livestreaming/magicalgoodness.isml because that's the folder I started the Publishing Point in.

Click Cue and cue your live source, then Start the broadcasting.

Create an HTML page like before, this time using the ISML file.

<html>
    <head>
        <title>iPhone Live Baby!</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Live Stream</h1>
        
        <video width="640" 
               height="360" 
               src="magicalGoodness.isml/manifest(format=m3u8-aapl).m3u8" 
               autoplay="true" 
               controls="true" >Live</video> 
    </body>
</html>

That's it! Here's a shot of me Encoding while streaming to an iPhone 4.

Plus, just for fun (and to make a point) I can take the Silverlight Player from the first step at the beginning of the blog post (or make my own with the Silverlight Media Framework 2.2) and just point its source to my live streaming endpoint: "<MediaSource>MagicalGoodness.isml%5CManifest</MediaSource>" and I'm using the same live video feed to serve video to my Silverlight client, my iPhone and iPad. Also, the new Silverlight Media Framework 2.2 supports Windows Phone 7 as well. ;)

And, it's not just a LIVE stream, but it's a live stream with DVR support, so folks can pause, back up, etc and it's all being archived to my server.

All this about a half an hour of setup. I was pretty impressed at how easy it was and with a little planning, I think I could this up for a local User Group with multiple lives streams and broad client support with some hardware a few hours. You might think about trying it for your local event as a practice, Dear Reader.

Related Links

• Getting Started with IIS Live Smooth Streaming
• Apple HTTP Live Streaming with IIS Media Services
• Creating and Managing Live Smooth Streaming Publishing Points
• Syndicating Live Smooth Streams between Servers
• Live Smooth Streaming Deployment
• IIS Media Services 4 released
• Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework 2.2
• All about Media Services
• Encode and Deliver On-Demand Smooth Streams with IIS Transform Manager and IIS Media Services 4

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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