Roku Developer Program

[streamingguy]

Hello,

I am planning to go with IIS Media services for LIVE streaming instead of Wowza server. I do not see much differences between these two if you are not looking for Flash streaming.

IIS Media services has the following advantages over Wowza - FYI: I am comparing with Wowza on Windows platform.

1. IIS Media services comes with out of the box.
2. Has good UI for configuration/setup.
3. UI to see the status of streams
4. Built-in DVR support/Archive support

Please let me know, if you see any disadvantages or more advantages.

Thank you for your time!

[RokuJoel]

Here is an article on the topic:

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/854/appl ... a-services

[bashir_aboug]

Hi,

I just want to give you some pointers and tell you what issues i'm experiencing.

First of all you shouldn't have any problems configuring IIS smooth streaming + Expression Encoder from the link that was posted.

First Issue

Some issues you might run into: (sdk video player example with xml streamurl config)

If you point to the m3u8 playlist it most likely will not work. Example below

- <streamUrl>http://x.x.x.x/example.isml/manifest(format=m3u8-aapl).m3u8</streamUrl>

Point to stream (bitrate of encode) like this instead and it will find the stream every time.

-> <streamUrl>http://x.x.x.x/example.isml/QualityLevels(896000)/manifest(format=m3u8-aapl).m3u8</streamUrl>

(Find the publishing point and you will see a list of the .ts files with their encoded bitrate and replace the qualitylevels with that bitrate.

That will save you hours if not days figuring out what is happening.

Next Issue

- DVR window Length (From IIS - Edit Publishing Point found in Advanced Settings)

If you leave it at 3 hours the video is seekable for 3 hours BUT who ever plays the stream will not receive your live real time encode. They will have a stream that will play whatever was encoded at the beginning of the DVR window size.

Say for example you started your live stream at 5:00pm EST and someone is viewing the stream at 6:00pm EST they will not get the live stream at 6:00pm instead it will start at 5:00pm (If you push down on the roku remote you will see that there is 60 mins of video but its playing back at 0 mins if you seek forward you can catch up).

Its very annoying so if you set the DVR window to 1 minutes you will get a real time live stream which will cause the roku to rebuffer / reload every minute.

Disabling the DVR window means the publishing point will not accept clients.

IF you find a work around for this then IIS Smooth Streaming is excellent.

How can you get the Roku to display the realtime live encode with IIS Smooth Streaming without it starting at the beginning of the DVR window size?? (Thats the question you should be asking. If I could disable the DVR functionality and have just a live stream that would be perfect)

Thats my experience

Bashir

[RokuJoel]

"bashir_aboug" wrote:

How can you get the Roku to display the realtime live encode with IIS Smooth Streaming without it starting at the beginning of the DVR window size?? (Thats the question you should be asking. If I could disable the DVR functionality and have just a live stream that would be perfect)

Thats my experience

Bashir

Here is something that might be useful to you:

According to RokuKevin, in reference to some similar questions we have been getting, to play the "now" part of your stream as opposed to starting at the beginning, on Roku you can either:

1) [on the server side] Use a "sliding live window" meaning only keep the latest segments (we recommend eight ) that represents the live point in the .m3u8

or

2) [in your video metadata] Specify a PlayStart value that will seek to the end of the stream. (It's best if it is a minute from the end of the stream for the best playback experience with reduced rebuffers). A value larger than the end of stream will just play at the live point.

That would I think look something like: videoclip.Playstart=10740
if the window is 3 hours, 10740 is 2 hours 59 minutes.

- Joel