What an Architect Should Know About Smooth Streaming

Ever wondered what it takes to deliver a really good streaming video experience over the web? Think it’s only possible if you have the infrastructure, resources, and bandwidth of a major CDN (Content delivery network) provider?

Introducing Smooth Streaming

Microsoft has created a new technology called Smooth Streaming (or Smooth HD) which allows adaptive streaming of Silverlight content over HTTP. What this means is that the video file can leverage edge servers and cache services plus the Smooth streaming client will automatically detect the clients bandwidth and hardware capabilities and adjust the video quality to give them the best experience. So, if the bandwidth is low the client will request the lower bit-rate version of the subsequent files.

What is Live Smooth Streaming?

Live Smooth Streaming provides the same great user experience as its Video On-Demand counterpart, using the same scalable delivery method that takes full advantage of commodity HTTP caches. In short, a user experience that…

· Starts playback and seeks instantly

· Does not stop to buffer

· Deliver the best quality your bandwidth and CPU allow at the moment

Live Smooth Streaming archives incoming data and provides a full Network Digital Video Recorder (DVR). It works just like a TiVo for online video, with support for replay, pause, and jumping back to the live broadcast. If you start watching a broadcast late, you can always jump back to see what you missed, and then resume watching the live broadcast.

Experience IIS Smooth Streaming

IIS Live Smooth Streaming enables adaptive streaming of live events to Microsoft Silverlight clients. To get a good idea of the experience that is now possible with this technology – take a look at http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming

Here you can simulate end user experiences under varying conditions by simulating drops and recoveries in bandwidth. If your actual bandwidth is below 3 Mbps, or your playback device is video-challenged, then you will experience the adaptive nature of Smooth Streaming without needing to simulate a bandwidth cap.

No More “Hurry-Up and Wait” jagged Video playback!

If you’re on point to deliver this type of experience for your enterprise, learn what is takes to make this possible via these great blog posts below:

What an Architect Should Know About Smooth Streaming
http://blogs.msdn.com/jimsblog/archive/2009/09/10/what-an-architect-should-know-about-smooth-streaming.aspx

Live Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Getting Started
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/620/live-smooth-streaming-for-iis-70---getting-started/

Technorati Tags: IIS7,Smooth Streaming,Expression Studio 3,Silverlight 3