David Bristol's Media blog

From Windows Media to IIS Media Services to Azure Media Services I'll have tips and tricks for each of these.

Azure Media Player support for audio-only and video-only streams

Azure Media Player itself does not support audio-only or video-only streams as per the bottom of...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 06/21/2017

Encoder changes within Azure Media Services now create ISMC file

Beginning in June 2016, when you encode videos with the Media Encoder Standard within Azure Media...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 07/08/2016

Progressive download and streaming differences with Azure Media Services

<note: I plan on occasionally editing this page with updated information. I may not document the...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 03/23/2016

Listing more than 1000 assets with the PHP SDK for Azure Media Services

To get the list of assets from Azure Media Services in the PHP SDK you use the getAssetList()...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 11/05/2015

500 error when streaming adaptive bitrate MP4 set content from Azure Media Services

If you are using Azure Media Services to deliver video content and encoded your video with one of...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 06/10/2015

Additional steps needed to enable multicast logging for Windows Media Services 2008 R2

Multicast logging can be useful when you want to collect statistical information about the client...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 10/21/2014

Unable to delete an Azure Media Services live streaming channel

When you use Azure Media Services to create a live streaming channel, a program is also created. A...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 10/06/2014

A Change in the Default URL Type When Publishing a MP4 using Azure Management Portal

Starting in September 2014 Azure Media Services changed the default behavior for publishing Azure...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 09/18/2014

Job record limit for Windows Azure Media Encoder

Job record limit for Windows Azure Media Encoder After processing a large number of videos with the...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 05/05/2014

Windows Media Services not supported on Windows Server 2012

[edited 2016-11-24 to include Windows Server 2016 info] I've been asked several times if Windows...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 11/14/2012

Error 400 Bad Request when using CloudMediaContext with Azure Media Services

When I was developing my first Azure Media Services application based on the how-to guide, I had a...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 06/08/2012

Azure Media Services is live!

In April Microsoft announced Azure Media Services at NAB in Las Vegas. This enables encoding,...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 06/07/2012

Why you see packet fragments with WMS multicast

First a bit of terminology that will help keep things clear. For the purposes of this discussion I...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 04/16/2011

Getting Windows Media Load Simulator to work on modern operating systems

The Windows Media Load Simulator (occasionally abbreviated as 'loadsim') tool was created to help...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 08/06/2010

Easiest way to use Smooth Streaming on the client

One of the things I’ve found with Smooth Streaming is that people have no idea how to create a...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 07/23/2010

Causes of 408's in a Windows Media Services log

One common question I get from Windows Media Services admins who have looked through their log files...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 11/11/2009

Using HTTP Referer to prevent deep linking to a WMS server

For a number of years now I've had customers ask me about how to prevent deep linking from random...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 10/16/2009

Using Windows Media Services 2008 Cache/Proxy plug-in

One of the main differences between Windows Media Services 9.1 on Windows 2003 and WMS 2008 on...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 08/18/2009

WMP debug page to dump player events

Attached to this post I've included a HTML file (inside the zip) that I use all of the time to see...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 07/20/2009

Forcing the embedded player to reconnect when an error occurs

In the next few posts, I am going to discuss high availability scenarios for times when you...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 07/14/2009

How to maintain an encoder/server connection on a problematic network

I occasionally get contacted by customers that are having problems keeping their Windows Media...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 07/09/2009

Silverlight installation requires the SSE CPU instruction set

One of the guys on my team recently tried installing Silverlight 2.0 on one of his older systems. He...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 05/27/2009

Fix for WMS 503 issue released

Since this is a fairly major issue for a number of people that are running Windows Media Services...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 03/30/2009

Troubleshooting the Silverlight MediaElement 4001 Error

This is my first post on Silverlight, so I thought I would post on a common issue that I've seen...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 02/09/2009

Getting your CD or DVD listed so it shows automatically in Windows Media Player

When you are ripping CDs with Windows Media Player, the player can automatically go out to the...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 01/15/2009

Windows Media Player now works with Kerberos

You may have seen in a network trace that when Windows Media Player connects to Windows Media...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 12/10/2008

WMP unable to connect to WMS 2008; WMS returning 503 Service Unavailable

I've talked to a number of people that are having problems streaming from Windows Media Services...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 09/05/2008

Cheap load balancing using an ASX as created by an ASP

This load balancing solution will cost you a grand total of about 10 minutes of time. Now I will say...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 08/26/2008

Using Wallclock Scheduling in WMS to start a broadcast at a specific time

Over the years I've talked to a number of people that want to broadcast a live video at a certain...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 08/26/2008

Windows Media Player Protocol Rollover

When Windows Media Player connects to a Windows Media server the player tries to use the most...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 08/18/2008

Easy automatic ASX generation

Easy automatic ASX generation In my first post, I thought it would be helpful to show how to use...

Author: David Bristol [msft] Date: 03/20/2008