IRT: Support: Web/Media: Workshops: Streaming Media

You have to pity Microsoft. No, I'm serious. You really do have to look at the unenviable industry position they are in and pity them. You see, being Microsoft is like being the old weathered gunfighter in a classic Western movie. Everybody is gunning for you. And though you sit with your back to the wall, sooner or later, some kid with a lucky shot is going to put you down.

So it is for their streaming media efforts. They cannot afford to win the streaming battle. They cannot afford to lose the streaming battle. They are effectively held in limbo.

Of course, now the burden of proof in my conclusion rests on me. So let me explain myself more thoroughly.

Microsoft owns the operating system world. If anyone can integrate streaming media into the desktop, they can. If they cannot do an outstanding job at it, they look lost. Looking lost doesn't hold well with customers and stockholders. So Microsoft must pursue streaming media as aggressively as any other effort. Indeed they have. Windows Media Technologies 4 was launched with great fanfare. Microsoft has reorganized internally to take on the streaming challenge. Microsoft is in the war to win it.

But what if they win the streaming war? Then bad things really begin to happen. If Microsoft wins, the company that stunted Apple and gutted Netscape becomes the company that killed RealNetworks. Not a good place to be. Three strikes and you are out. Despite their apparent domination of streaming, RealNetworks is still the beloved underdog and is often considered the true streaming innovator. Both companies are from the same metropolitan area. If RealNetworks goes down because of Microsoft, there is no place to hide locally or federally. Those will not be buzzards circling overhead. Those will be anti-trust lawyers.

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Now leave behind the technology side and look at things from a content perspective. Streaming media is more about content than any other Web environment. Ultimately, it is all about content. Even Microsoft itself has realized this and invested heavilly in acquiring control over digital content. Now let's say you are a large content company like Disney. You're probably not eager to hand business to a company that may be a serious competitor someday. So why use that competitor's technology in delivering your content? The answer is that you don't. You either support the underdog companies or balance Microsoft with another streaming format. Look around the Web and that is exactly what you see.

So the irony is this. If there is one company that has the might and positioning to create streaming standardization, it is Microsoft. But because of their power and leverage, they simply cannot do it. They can only sit and wait.

That said, Microsoft has kept in the game. Once losing to QuickTime on the multimedia CD-ROM front, Microsoft has resurrected their digital video efforts on to the Internet battleground. Despite some limitations in cross-platform players and authoring tools, Windows Media Technologies and their Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) is a solid environment in which to work. The old gunfighter may have his back to the wall, but there are bullets in that six-shooter.

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Windows Media Player 4

A Closer Look at Windows Media Technologies

Free Player and Tools

One advantage that Microsoft has over its competitors is cash. They have a lot of it. That means they can pretty much afford to do the research and give the resulting products away whenever possible. As a result, you will find that the tools you need to produce and view Windows Media and the Advanced Streaming Format are readily available from their Web site.

As streaming players go, the Windows Media Player does the job with little fanfare. It lacks the sophisticated look of Apple's QuickTime or the extra features of RealNetwork's RealPlayer. Capable simplicity appears to be Microsoft's goal.

On the production tools side, Microsoft offers a very healthy package for a free download. The Windows Media Tools download comes with the usual encoder. But thrown in there as well is Windows Media Indexer and Windows Media Author. Windows Media Indexer adds properties to your file so that the user can move within the clip (fast forward, rewind, scroll). It also adds title information. Both of these features are included with most other typical encoders. What is not included is the functionality of Windows Media Author. Developed for Microsoft as a flavor of the former T.A.G. authoring package, this application is offered free instead its usual hefty price tag. For those with other tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Premiere already installed on their systems, a pleasant surprise will occur. Your applications will gain new Windows Media options automatically when you install Windows Media Tools.

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Serving It

Like pretty much everyone else, the Advanced Streaming Format supports streaming from a streaming server or a typical Web server. And just like everyone else, a streaming server is going to offer a more robust streaming package.

To set up for streaming the Advanced Streaming Format, you will need Windows Media Services running on your server. Windows Media Services is a free download but here is where the free ride ends. You will need Microsoft NT 4 Server installed on your server to use Windows Media Services. To make things plug-and-play, Microsoft has teamed up with Compaq to offer a complete Windows Media Training Server system. For under $4000, you gain everything you need to start streaming immediately.

Macintosh Support

My one big criticism with Windows Media? Despite huge growth in their Macintosh software lineup over the last couple of years, the Microsoft Media Player beta still lags behind its Windows sibling. Likewise, ASF production tools for the Mac are nonexistent. Why is this important in a world still ruled by PC's? Because a large number of content producers, especially in the world of multimedia, are still Macintosh users. Don't think so? Even here in Seattle, a show of hands at a large producers conference revealed that roughly 80% of the group consisted of Macintosh users. Mac content producers will accept cross-platform environments. But they are hesitant to develop for any approach that is a one system wonder. Windows Media Technologies and the Advanced Streaming Format has a way to go before being considered a cross-platform environment.

The long term prognosis for Mac production tools is looking up. Microsoft employs a good number of Macintosh programmers. And while they have some catching up to do, it is possible they could roll out Mac production tools within a year if Microsoft made it a priority.

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Launch the Windows Media Encoder...

and you get to choose a template configuration from which to work. Choose "Template with I/O options" for a Windows Media Server or "Custom settings" for use with a standard Web server.

Encoding with Windows Media Encoder

Getting Started

Assuming that you have your source material already digitized in the AVI, WAV, or MP3 format, you can jump right into converting your material to streaming with the Windows Media Encoder.

Limiting the encoder to AVI, WAV, and MP3 does box you in a little. But since these are standard formats for most Windows based digitizing and editing packages, you will find the encoder works well with most of your current audio and video tools. You will also find Windows Media support now right inside a number of common third-party Windows packages.

Templates

The Windows Media Encoder uses a template approach. Each template represents the best solution for a particular application. Personally, I found this confusing when I first started using the application. It really is not that difficult once you are familiar with the software. It is just that the welcome menu is labelled ambiguously and Microsoft would probably be well served by going in and simplifying the language.

So when you launch Windows Media Encoder for the first time, you might be tempted to choose "QuickStart." It sounds so rapid and friendly. If you are encoding live content, that is your best choice. But if you have existing content sitting on your hard drive, you will want to make a different choice. If you are working with a server that supports Windows Media, you want to choose "Template with I/O options." This will allow you to designate the files you want to work with. From there, encoding is a simple step-by-step process.

For those of you who are experimenting with streaming from your usual Web (HTTP) servers, you will want to choose "Custom settings." This route is perhaps the most intimidating for the Windows Media beginner. But since many of you will experiment with Windows Media on your HTTP servers before setting up a streaming server, we will take that route for this tutorial.

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Setting up the Windows Media Encoder for converting your file involves an orderly sequence of option screens.

Once through the template input and output options, the file is ready for encoding.

Now What?

Yes, there are a lot of screens that pop up when configuring Windows Media Encoder for the first time. But the process is actually very orderly. Microsoft does a reasonably good job of giving you information about what the choices mean. After choosing between live input or pre-digitized file, you must designate the source of the input file and whether you will use a single or multiple bit rate stream. For a standard Web server, I choose a single rate stream. Next comes a target bandwidth speed, a audio and video codec, and designating an output filename.

Of all of these steps, choosing a codec is probably the most difficult. The beginner can go with the default Microsoft codecs. But if you want to tweak, the codec configuration screen is the best place to do it. While the built-in help information covers the application well, it is pretty quiet on the codecs themselves. This is where a Web site like Terran's Codec Central can be invaluable in understanding how to get the most FOR your particular Windows Media clip.

Once your configuration is set, a summary screen appears. Click the play button (forward arrow) and compression begins. A preview window is available if you want to watch your footage as it compresses. You will find the "Preview" option under the "View" pulldown menu.

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Putting Your ASF Clip on the Web

The Redirector

Much like RealNetworks and its RAM file, Windows Media Technologies uses a "redirector" file for the Advanced Streaming Format. This ASF Streaming Redirector file (ASX) is an XML format file that basically creates a shortcut to the actual ASF file on the server. So when your browser links to the ASX file, the ASX file in turn links to the ASF file. That may sound kind of complicated but it really does little more than create a hand off from your Web browser to your Windows Media Player.

Creating the ASX

Creating your ASX file is as easy as opening your text editor. An ASX is a lot like writing HTML except the file ends with a ".asx" extension. So in your blank text file, type the following markup to stream a file from your HTTP Web server:

<asx version = "3.0">
<title>Your Show Title</title>
<entry>
<ref href= "http://www.yourisp.com/yourfolder/yourasf.asf" />
</entry>
</asx>

Then save your file with the ".asx" extension and you are ready to go. It's that easy. In the above code, the asx version identifies the current version of the ASX format. Even though the Windows Media Player is version 4, ASX version 3 is the current requirement. The title field information will appear in the Show box of the player. "entry" creates the block that contains the clip itself. You can add additional attributes here for clip name, author, and copyright. Consult the Microsoft documentation for further information on adding these attributes. For our reference to the ASF clip itself, a ref href= command makes the link to the media. In this case, I'm linking to a file sitting on a standard HTTP Web server. If you are coming from a Microsoft Media Services Server, an "mms:" in the place of http: will do the trick.

Linking to the ASX

From here, putting the first clip online only gets easier. It is time to link our HTML to the ASX file. If you are using a relative link to an ASX file in the same folder as your HTML, use the following approach in your HTML:

<a href="myasxfile.asx">Click for Video</a>

That is all there is to it. Upload your ASF, ASX and HTML files to your Web server and you are ready to try it out. You can try some WMT/ASF sample as well. (http://www.streamingmediaworld.com/art/win/wmt4.asx)

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Embedding ASF in a Web Page

Embedding with OBJECT

For PC Internet Explorer users, the following HTML addition to your Web page will use the OBJECT method of embedding the clip:

If your ASX file is in the same directory as your HTML, relative addressing as shown above in the VALUE attribute is the only bit of code you will need to worry about. the rest you can pretty much cut and paste into your HTML. Now that gets you started but you might want to cover for those Netscape users as well.

Embedding for the Plug-In

Windows Media and ASF for Netscape are accessed by way of a plug-in. So we will want to add the following HTML to our prior OBJECT code:

The various Show parameters will reveal the controls the user needs to play the file. Put your own Width and height parameters in to control the size of the player window. As with the OBJECT approach, put you your own file name in for SRC.

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Testing Our Work

With both the OBJECT and EMBED tags in their proper places, our code will look like this:

</OBJECT>

The results should look something like this:

That does it for our look at Windows Media Basics. We'll come back and visit additional Windows Media and Advanced Streaming Format topics farther down.

Additional Tutorials from Microsoft

Advanced Scripting for Cross-Browser Functionality (from Microsoft)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/imedia/windowsmedia/crcontent/cross-browser.asp

Return to Main Workshops Page or Return to Streaming Media Workshops

Modified: October 3, 2008

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