Utterly confused- Cant play smooth streaming from Azure CDN

Question

Hello,

I need some direction / guidance.

Problem - Not able to play smooth streaming from SmoothStreamingPlayer or Windows phone...Am new to smooth streaming & Azure CDN.

1. Encoded mp4 file as IIS Smooth Streaming,H.264 Baseline, AAC-LC

2. Published the output to Windows Azure Blob Storage

Note - CDN enabled on storage Account

3. Am able to get to the ism file. http://xxxxx.vo.msecnd.net/teststreaming/xxxxxxxxx.ism

So what am I doing wrong??

Using Microsoft.Web.Media.SmoothStreaming;

video.SmoothStreamingSource =

newUri("http://xxxxx.vo.msecnd.net/teststreaming/xxxxxxxxx.ism/manifest");

By the way, I followed this blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/giuseppeguerrasio/archive/2010/12/06/using-smooth-streaming-media-element-for-windows-phone-7.aspx

Thanks. Any help will be great.

Answer 1

@ManuY could you please provide details:

• What is the exact issue
• Are you playing on device? Simulator does not support H.264
• What kind of device? Some devices have restrictions - http://vishalsood.com/?q=content/2010/12/03/iis-smooth-streaming-encoding-windows-phone-7 (older post but you will get an idea)
• Are you using MMPPF (aka SMF), there is a way using restrictTracks APIs to play assets that are not completely compatible with WP devices

Answer 2

Hello Vishal,

Thanks for the response. I have now encoded my video to VC-1 Advanced, so that I can get something working..

• Am running code on windows phone 7 & not emulator..
• Issue is it does not play. I cannot call video.Play() throws "Play is not allowed when there is no source set."
• Am using code from blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/giuseppeguerrasio/archive/2010/12/06/using-smooth-streaming-media-element-for-windows-phone-7.aspx
• Am really confused. :(.. Don't understand why its so complex.. & does not even throw an error. Am doubting the concept of smooth streaming on CDN now.

any help / direction will be helpful.

Thanks.

public partial class SSMETest : PhoneApplicationPage
    {
        public SSMETest()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void PhoneApplicationPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            video.AutoPlay = true;
            video.CurrentStateChanged += new RoutedEventHandler(video_CurrentStateChanged);
            video.PlaybackTrackChanged += new EventHandler<TrackChangedEventArgs>(video_PlaybackTrackChanged);
            video.SmoothStreamingSource = new Uri("http://xxx.vo.msecnd.net/teststreaming/6a3c2acd-8a2f-41ee-9203-137d7ba7ecd5.ism/manifest");
                        
            
        }

        void video_PlaybackTrackChanged(object sender, TrackChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            currentBitrate.Text = e.NewTrack.Bitrate.ToString();
        }

        void video_CurrentStateChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            status.Text = video.CurrentState.ToString();
        }

        private void StopButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            //This should simply stop the playback
            video.Stop();
            //We should also reflect the chang on the play button
            PlayButton.Content = "Play";
        }

        private void PlayButton_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            switch (video.AutoPlay)
            {
                case false:
                    PlayButton.Content = "Play";
                    break;
                case true:
                    PlayButton.Content = "Pause";
                    break;
            }
        }

        private void PlayButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {

            //Monitor the state of the content to determine the right action to take on this button being clicked
            //and then change the text to reflect the next action
            switch (video.CurrentState)
            {
                case SmoothStreamingMediaElementState.Playing:
                    video.Pause();
                    PlayButton.Content = "Play";
                    break;
                case SmoothStreamingMediaElementState.Stopped:
                case SmoothStreamingMediaElementState.Paused:
                    video.Play();
                    PlayButton.Content = "Pause";
                    break;
            }


        }
    }

Answer 3

@ManuY

Please refer to instructions here and try - http://smf.codeplex.com/documentation.

As I mentioned not all streams would run on Windows Phone given platform restrictions around resolution supported. Using SMF should be better as it has some code to work around those limitations and pick streams that work on Windows Phone.

Answer 4

Blob storage doesn't know anything about Smooth Streaming. I believe the CDN does have a Smooth Streaming feature these days, but I also think that's currently in a limited CTP (was last time I checked), so you would have had to sign up for that feature to get it enabled. Did you?

If not, blob storage and the CDN will happily serve up the file, but Smooth Streaming requires a different protocol than just serving up the file.