Azure and live streaming

问题

I'm trying to make a live video streaming with Azure but i realy don't know what i should try first.

First, a have a web site with a latest version of Flowplayer on it.

Now i need to know how to make a stream video from my web camera to Azure (what kind of software do i need)? I'm trying to use Expression Encoder 4 Pro (but it dosen't want to Stream video to Azure Blobs). Next step i need to know what i should to do on Azure? I mean some settings, maybe i should make a VM with IIS role on it, or just use a Blobs? And how to make it?

And the last step is how to set up a Flowplayer to take streaming video from Azure?

Thank's for your answers.

回答1:

What you really need is two web server first one is going to act as "Receiver endpoint to receive your encoded live stream" and the second web server is to distribute the live content as "publishing endpoint" to your SL or HTML 5 video player i.e. Flow Player.

You can either use Windows Azure Cloud Services (as Web Role) or Windows Azure Virtual Machines (IaaS). I would prefer Windows Azure Virtual Machines as I would have much more control to setup the IIS smooth Media Server on IIS in Azure VM then a Web Role where I will be limited to what I can configure using Startup task.

For a Windows Azure web role the concept of Live Streaming is explained here which is worth taking look and understand it as most of the work you will do in your application while using Visual Studio.

If you decide to choose Windows Azure Virtual Machine, you will do most of the configuration directly on Windows Server which is comparatively easy. To start with first you just need to learn how to setup IIS Live Smooth Streaming in a Windows Server and this you can either do on a local machine or directly on a Windows Azure Virtual Machine running Windows Server and IIS. You can also take a look at this article to learn more on this regard.

Both of above solution does not require you to store any content on Azure Blobs which does meet your requirement and IIS live streaming does support HTML 5 video playback so you can play the content with FlowPlayer.