Microsoft Media Platform: Player Framework

New Post: Latency parameters ignored

peppert — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:24:26 GMT

Thanks, Loke:

Yeah, we've set lookahead fragments to 1 in IISMS.

I've looked high and low for any documentation on LLSS. There appears to be none on how to actually implement, save setting the above values which don't appear to actually have any effect in SMF (at least in the way I've implemented them.)

Envivio has been kind enough to provide us with a unit for proof of concept, and has configured their encoder and our IISMS the way it's meant to be done, but we're having difficulty locating any information on how to actually build a Silverlight player that demonstrates any latency below 17-20s or evidence that one exists in the wild today. All that seems to exist on the internet is few short snippets that accompanied the Smooth Client 1.5 release claiming that it's now possible, and referencing the above values which don't appear to work via SMF.

We've raised the issue with MS top brass @ silverlight and envivio. I'll report back with any findings in the hopes it'll help someone else down the road.

New Post: Latency parameters ignored

lokexstream — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:15:33 GMT

I am not sure BufferingTime actually does much for this scenario. I would remind you that there is also a serverside setting on how many segments it should keep (i believe this defaults to 2). Also, you might wan't to look into low latency smooth streaming if your encoder supports it. As i understand it, LLSS allows the encoder to send incomplete segments to help with bufferbloat.

- Loke

Created Issue: Fragments continue to be fetched when pausing live smooth stream [22762]

vplayer — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:20:55 GMT

When pausing a live smooth-stream (.isml), I noticed from the network tab, that the Player continues to fetch fragments. This is unlike the pause behavior on VoD content (fragment fetch stops on pause). I'm using MMPPF version 2.6.1 and Silverlight runtime 5.0.61118.0.

Please could you let me know how this can be addressed? Alternatively, is there a work-around to prevent fragment fetch when pausing a live stream?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Commented Issue: CaptionsPanel text are not resizing... [22760]

Julienv42 — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:39:36 GMT

When the player is re-sized the text does not resize accordingly and if there are 2-3 lines of data, it shows only the middle line or part of it if the screen very small.
Comments: ** Comment from web user: Julienv42 **

I haven't made my new one yet, I've got other things to get working before.
You can easily get the default one using Expression Blend, right click on Player => Edit Template => Edit a copy.

Commented Issue: CaptionsPanel text are not resizing... [22760]

koushikdutta2000 — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:43:21 GMT

Can u please share the "control template"...

Commented Issue: CaptionsPanel text are not resized... [22760]

Julienv42 — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:19:54 GMT

I agree that the captions rendering is quite poor as is, and doesn't make a very good use of Silverlight text capabilities.
As it stands, I will probably re-make it in my own project by editing the control template.
+1

Created Issue: CaptionsPanel text are not resized... [22760]

koushikdutta2000 — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:04:38 GMT

When the player is re-sized the text does not resize accordingly and if there are 2-3 lines of data, it shows only the middle line or part of it if the screen very small.

New Post: Latency parameters ignored

peppert — Mon, 14 May 2012 06:26:22 GMT

Hello:

Created a 2.6.1 project with the latest 1.5 smooth client and am having it play back live content. Have been attempting to reduce latency down from the default 18s value to something under 10 seconds.

Have managed to figure out how to create a custom control in the player and set/verify liveplaybackoffset, livebackoff, and bufferingtime SmoothStreamingMediaElement values at 1 second, but it does not have any impact whatsoever on actual end to end latency when running the app.

Can someone confirm this is correct, and shed some insight on why it has no overall effect on SSME's actual playback latency?

Thanks in advance.

namespace SMF_SmoothStreaming1
{
    public class CustomPlayer : SMFPlayer
    {
        protected override void OnMediaOpened()
        {
            base.OnMediaOpened();

            SmoothStreamingMediaElement ssme = ActiveMediaPlugin.VisualElement as SmoothStreamingMediaElement;

            if (ssme != null)
            {
                TimeSpan smallOffset = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 1);
                ssme.LivePlaybackOffset = smallOffset;
                ssme.LiveBackOff = smallOffset;
                ssme.BufferingTime = smallOffset;

            }
        }
    }
}

New Post: Audio Visualization

lokexstream — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:04:52 GMT

I don't believe it is unless you are using MediaStreamSource to parse the audio yourself. If you wanna take that approach you can look at https://github.com/loarabia/ManagedMediaHelpers

- Loke

New Post: Audio Visualization

mogadanez — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:31:43 GMT

Does it possible to make audio visualization with SMF? Plugin ?

New Post: SMF Player not switching the bit rates

streamingguy — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:12:22 GMT

Thank you Loke!

Today, we tried the same stream with the same player on a system (1), which is geographically near to the USP server. The player was able to pick the highest bit rate in less than 5 seconds. But, not on the system (2), which is geographically little bit far from the USP server. I need to look at the latency.

I am not sure why Adobe HDS & Apple HLS streams are working with high bit rates on the same system(2). The encoder and USP server are running on the same server.

New Post: Need suggestions in serving Advertisements!

streamingguy — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:06:12 GMT

Thank you Loke. I will try the playlist and then the CSM.

New Post: Problem Smooth Streaming SMF Player

lokexstream — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:39:34 GMT

Hi,

I am not sure this is the root cause, but are you fetching the manifest from the same server and port as the Silverlight page is hosted? What does tracing the network connections using something like the IE developer tools or fiddler show?

Also see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189008%28v=vs.95%29 and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645032%28v=vs.95%29.aspx

- Loke

New Post: SMF Player not switching the bit rates

lokexstream — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:37:05 GMT

Hi Streamingguy

I would suggest monitoring the http requests, the player might be too far along in the livestream where it tries to fetch the higher qualities but they are simple not ready yet. I am not sure how USP handles this, but if it uploads the lowest quality segment first it might be that it is simply available first when none of the others are.

- Loke

New Post: Need suggestions in serving Advertisements!

lokexstream — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:35:25 GMT

The last time i tested i saw no real delay between the clips, it was certainly not enough to make me want to create composite manifests, but it might vary for you. A quick test should be easy enough to set up.

Nope, not really. We normally integrate with third parties like Videoplaza. If your current inhouse server is software you have bought there might be an update enabling VAST, at least in our market it looks like more or less every single ad solution supports VAST now. (MAST and VPAID arent as extensively supported though)

You are welcome :)

- Loke

New Post: SMF Player not switching the bit rates

streamingguy — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:15:22 GMT

Hello,

We have a live smooth streaming running with 200kbps, 700kbps and 1.2mbps bit rates. The player starts with 200kbps and not switching the bit rates. I do not see any dropped frames, high CPU utilization. The client is running on i7 with 10mbps internet connection.

We are using Unified Streaming Platform server to generate Adobe HDS, Smooth streaming and Apple HLS streams. On the same client machine, Adobe HDS is switching the bit rates. On the same network, Apple HLS works fine on ROKU. But, SMF player is not switching the bit rates.

Do you see any issue here OR do you suggest any tool to analyse the issue? I have used Health Monitoring tool, but didn't get the root cause of the issue.

Thank you

New Post: Need suggestions in serving Advertisements!

streamingguy — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:54:31 GMT

Hello Loke,

Thank you so much for your reply.

If I use playlist, will there be a delay between each item? All of my main videos are Smooth streaming videos. Some of the Ads are also in Smooth streaming format. Is it possible Or is it a good practice to create a composite manifest dynamically and load the Ads into CSM file?

Do you suggest any VAST server to use as in-house server?

Thank you so much for helping many of us on these discussion!

New Post: Need suggestions in serving Advertisements!

lokexstream — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:24:32 GMT

If you inhouse software can produce VAST compatible feeds, you could use the approach from http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/content/smf/howto/v2/documents/Advertising.docx actually that might have some hints on how to do it otherwise as well. We've implemented pre and postrolls just using the playlist, and then hiding controls based on item type. This works great as our feeds already present something easily convertible to a playlist, of course this won't handle mid rolls though.

- Loke

New Post: Need suggestions in serving Advertisements!

streamingguy — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:18:21 GMT

Hello,

We have implemented SMF player and looking for help in implementing ads. We have our own video ads, which we want to display them as pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll. Is there any free software to use it as in-house Ad server to serve our own ads and track the statistics?

Thank you for your time!

New Post: Playlist with two video content doesn't play continuously

streamingguy — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:11:07 GMT

dimpellizzeri wrote:

streamingguy wrote:

The best way will be to use Composite Manifest. You can build Composite manifest using the tool "Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor". http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/VideoEditor

You can look at the demo here: http://videoeditor.cloudapp.net

Hi,

thank you for the suggestion. It's just what I done a week ago, and it works!!

Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor has still some problems but I could done the job! For example if you add two videos in their interely, the second clip is without audio (without tag c) and the manifest doesn't play, so you have to manually modify the manifest to add the missed tags...

Thanks again and kind regards,

Daniele Impellizzeri

Thank you for updating!

If you have few minutes, could you please post the error details on Video Editor Page? I think they are coming up with next version in this month and they may fix it.