When you create Live Smooth Streaming publishing points in IIS Manager, you can choose from different options to support the following live media delivery scenarios (multiple scenarios may apply):
- Deliver a live presentation to users
- Deliver a live presentation to other Web servers
- Deliver a live presentation from another Web server
- Automatically publish a live presentation to other Web servers
- Archive a live presentation
This walkthrough describes how to create publishing points and configure them for different Live Smooth Streaming scenarios. It contains the following topics:
Requirements
- This walkthrough requires that you install IIS Live Smooth Streaming and deploy sample file and content on a Web server running Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0. For more information about setting up this configuration, see Live Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Getting Started.
- This walkthrough uses the following suggested installation directory for the sample files: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Big Buck Bunny. If you install the components in a different directory, substitute the directory path as appropriate as you follow the examples in this walkthrough.
- Microsoft Silverlight is required to view the playback experience in a Web browser.
Creating a Publishing Point
To create a Live Smooth Streaming publishing point in IIS Manager, do the following:
- In the Connections pane, select a Web site or virtual directory.
- On the Home page, under Media Services, double-click Live Smooth Streaming Publishing Points.
- In the Actions pane, click Add to open the Add Publishing Point dialog box.
For details about the Add Publishing Point dialog box options, see About Publishing Point Options. The combination of publishing point options that you can select differ for each Live Smooth Streaming scenario.
Note If the application pool for Live Smooth Streaming is configured to use worker process recycling, the following alert may be displayed above the Actions pane when you open the feature:
Live Smooth Streaming requires that worker process recycling be disabled to ensure uninterrupted playback of a live presentation. If other applications that run in the same application pool require worker process recycling to function well, we highly recommend that you create a separate application pool for the Web site or virtual directory for use with Live Smooth Streaming before creating a publishing point.
To disable worker process recycling for the current application pool, click the alert text and then click OK in the following message:
About Publishing Point Options
The configuration of publishing point options depends on the Live Smooth Streaming scenario that you plan to implement. This section describes the options that are available in the Add Publishing Points dialog box, and the following section describes which options to choose for each scenario.
The Add Publishing Point Dialog Box has two tabs: Basic Settings and Advanced Settings.
About Basic Settings
- File name. The desired name of the publishing point.
- Title. The display name of the publishing point.
- Estimated duration. The estimated duration of the event, in hours:minutes:seconds. If the duration of the live stream is known, entering the value allows a client to scale its Seek bar to the content length.
- Live source type. The source of the live stream. A Push source posts the encoded live stream data to the Web server. The Web server gets the encoded live stream data by requesting it from a Pull source.
- Pull Publishing Point URL. The primary and failover URLs and corresponding credentials, if any, for a Pull source.
- Add. Add a pull publishing point URL.
- Remove. Remove the selected pull publishing point URL.
Note The pull Publishing Point URL, Add, and Remove controls are only visible when Live source type is set to Pull.
About Advanced Settings
- Archive media. Enables archiving of live streams to on-demand Smooth Streaming presentations.
- Archive as single presentation. Configures the server to create a single on-demand Smooth Streaming presentation from the live presentation archive.
- Archive as segmented presentation. Configures the server to create a set of on-demand Smooth Streaming presentations, or segments, from the live presentation archive. The length of each segment, in minutes, is specified in the Segment length box.
- Allow client connections. Enables user publishing.
- Enable DVR for the entire event. Enables DVR functionality (fast-forward, rewind, and seek) for users to access any part of the live stream that has been published.
- Enable DVR for recent content. Enables DVR functionality for users to access only a part of the live stream that has been published. The portion of the published live stream, in minutes, that is made available for DVR is specified in the DVR window length box.
- Allow server connections. Enables syndication.
- Push Publishing Point URL. The set of publishing point URLs to which the server will post any incoming content automatically. This data appears as a push source to the servers with publishing points in the list.
- Add. Add a push publishing point URL.
- Remove. Remove the selected push publishing point URL.
- Start publishing point automatically upon first client request. A setting for cache servers that conserves resources when no clients are connected.
Note The push Publishing Point URL, Add, and Remove controls are only visible when Live source type is set to Push on the Basic Settings tab.
Live Smooth Streaming Scenarios
When you create a Live Smooth Streaming publishing point in IIS Manager, you can choose from different options to support the following live media delivery scenarios (multiple scenarios may apply):
Deliver a Live Presentation to Users
If the purpose of your publishing point is to deliver a live presentation directly to users, select or specify values for the following options in the Add Publishing Point dialog box:
- File name
- Title (optional)
- Estimated duration (optional)
- Live source type. Select Push unless delivering a presentation from another server.
- Allow client connections. Enable DVR functionality for the live broadcast if required. For more information, see About Advanced Settings.
Deliver a Live Presentation to other Web Servers
If the purpose of your publishing point is to deliver a live presentation to another Web server, select or specify values for the following options in the Add Publishing Point dialog box:
- File name
- Title (optional)
- Estimated duration (optional)
- Live source type. Select Push unless delivering a presentation from another server.
- Allow server connections
Note A publishing point that delivers content to publishing points on other servers is often called an upstream publishing point (the server is closer to the encoder in the delivery chain) while the publishing points that receive the distributed content are called downstream publishing points (the servers are closer to the client in the delivery chain). In this scenario, the downstream publishing points are configured to "pull" the live stream from the upstream publishing point. See the following section for more information about this scenario.
Deliver a Live Presentation from another Web Server
If the purpose of your publishing point is to syndicate a live presentation provided by another Web server and deliver it directly to users, select or specify values for the following options in the Add Publishing Point dialog box:
- File name
- Title
- Estimated duration. Leave the default value 00:00:00.
- Live source type. Select Pull. See Specifying Pull Source URLs (below) for more information about configuring this live source type.
- Allow client connections. Enable DVR functionality for the live broadcast if required. For more information, see About Advanced Settings.
Specifying Pull Source URLs
When you select the Live source type option Pull on the Basic Settings tab in the Add Publishing Point dialog box, additional controls are displayed for configuring a pull source URL (the URL of the Web server from which this server requests content).
To specify a pull source URL, do the following:
- Click Add.
- In the Add Publishing Point URL dialog box, in URL, enter the URL of the publishing point on the syndicating Web server from which to obtain the content.
Note If the publishing point on the syndicating Web server (the upstream publishing point) requires that this publishing point (the downstream publishing point) provide credentials to access the content, select the credential with the appropriate user name and password in the Credential dropdown list. For more information about creating and applying credentials, see Live Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Syndicating Content between Servers. This example shows that credentials are not required (Credential = (None)).
- Click OK. The pull source URL is added to the Add Publishing Point dialog box.
- Click OK. The syndicating publishing point is added to the Live Smooth Streaming Publishing Points feature page.
Automatically Syndicate a Live Presentation to other Web Servers
This scenario is applicable when used in the context of one the following scenarios:
To automatically syndicate to other servers, do the following:
- On the Basic Settings tab, set Live source type to Push.
- On the Advanced Settings tab, click Add.
- In the Add Publishing Point URL dialog box, in URL, enter the URL of the publishing point to which to automatically syndicate the content. Content coming from this server will appear as a push source to the specified publishing point.
Note If the publishing point on the syndicating Web server (the downstream publishing point) requires that this publishing point (the upstream publishing point) provide credentials to deliver the content, select the credential with the appropriate user name and password in the Credential dropdown list. For more information about creating and applying credentials, see Live Smooth Streaming for IIS 7.0 - Syndicating Content between Servers. This example shows that credentials are not required (Credential = (None)).
Archive a Live Presentation
This scenario is applicable when used in the context of one the following scenarios:
To archive a live presentation, do the following:
- On the Advanced Settings tab, select the Archive media checkbox.
- Select one of the following archiving options for the live broadcast:
- Archive as single presentation. Configures the server to create a single on-demand Smooth Streaming presentation from the live presentation archive.
- Archive as segmented presentation. Configures the server to create a set of on-demand Smooth Streaming presentations, or segments, from the live presentation archive. If you choose this option, specify the length of each segment, in minutes, in the Segment length box.
About Publishing Point States
Every publishing point is shutdown when it is created and progresses through the following states during it's lifetime before returning to the shutdown state:
- Shutdown. The publishing point cannot receive or serve data.
- Starting. The publishing point is ready to start receiving data.
- Live. The publishing point is sourcing and delivering a live stream.
- DVR-only. The publishing point is not receiving live data, but continues to serve DVR requests.
- Shutdown. The publishing point is ready to repeat the cycle.
This section provides more information about the publishing point states, their allowed transitions, and how those transitions are effected. Note that some transitions occur due to external events, such as the acquisition or loss of an encoder connection.
Shutdown
The publishing point cannot receive data from an encoder. To start it, select the publishing point in the Live Smooth Streaming Publishing Points page, and then click the Start Publishing Point link in the Actions pane:
The publishing point transitions to the Starting state.
Starting
The publishing point is ready to receive content from an encoder. When an encoder connects to the publishing point, it automatically transitions to the Live state. You can use the pushencoder.exe simulation tool that is included in the IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit - Beta 1 to simulate an encoder connection that is based on an existing on-demand Smooth Streaming asset.
The general syntax to use for pushencoder in a push scenario is:
pushencoder <url-of-publishingpoint> <ism-file>
Where <url-of-publishingpoint> is the fully qualified URL of the publishing point .isml file on the Web server and <ism-file> is the relative URL of the manifest for an on-demand Smooth Streaming presentation that describes its available bit rates.
To simulate an encoder connection for the Big Buck Bunny presentation in the default location to sample.isml, run the following in a command prompt (assumes the current directory is the location of pushencoder.exe):
pushencoder http://server_name/sample.isml "Big Buck Bunny.ism"
The publishing point transitions to the Live state.
Note You can effect a transition to the DVR-only or Shutdown states by clicking the Stop Live Source or Shut Down Publishing Point links, respectively, in the Actions pane.
Live
The publishing point is receiving and archiving content, and delivering it to users or syndicating it to other Web servers, depending on its configuration settings. When the presentation is finished, the sourcing point (an encoder or another Web server) stops providing data, which automatically causes the publishing point to transition to the DVR-only state.
Note You can effect a transition to the DVR-only or Shutdown states by clicking the Stop Live Source or Shut Down Publishing Point links, respectively, in the Actions pane.
DVR-only
The publishing point serves requests for Network Digital Video Recoder (DVR) playback of content archived during the Live state by delivering fragments to clients, if the Allow client connections option for the publishing point is enabled. No live content is sourced or delivered. You can shut down the publishing point when ready by clicking the Shut Down Publishing Point link in the Actions pane.
The publishing point transitions to the Shutdown state.
Viewing Publishing Point Status
You can view the status of publishing points when you open the Live Smooth Streaming Publishing Points feature page.
Publishing points support the following behaviors and will show the current status of each:
- Source. Sourcing content from an encoder or server.
- Archive. Archiving content to disk.
- Fragment. Delivering fragments for client playback.
- Stream. Delivering streams to other Web servers for syndication.
The status for each behavior can be one of the following:
- Disabled. The behavior is not enabled for the publishing point.
- Unknown. The behavior is enabled, but the publishing point is shutdown.
- Starting. The publishing point is waiting for external data (for example, from an encoder).
- Started. The behavior is actively running.
- Stopped. The behavior is enabled but is not currently running.
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