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Announcement: 8

Azure Media Services announcement

  • Link
    Azure Media Services v3 API has now entered general availability
    John Deutscher


    Developers and media companies trust and rely on Azure Media Services to build media applications that include encoding, content protection with DRM, video indexing, live streaming, dynamic packaging, and content delivery at scale. The API now features: 

    •   A simplified development and management model that 

    • adds new capabilities across live, VOD, and Content Protection 

    • includes new presets to facilitate automated audio and video metadata extraction workflows in Azure 

    • A new live streaming (LiveEvent) entity with support for 8-second end-to-end low-latency streaming across both HLS and DASH (when using 1s GOPs)

    • Release of a CLI 2.0 command line module that supports all API features (including live!) 

    • Better integration experience with key Azure services like Event Grid, Logic Apps, and Functions 

    • Updated versions of the most requested client SDKs for .NET, .NET Core, Java, Go, Ruby, Python, and Node.js. 

    In addition, there are updates to Azure Media Player— AMP now includes a Low Latency profile to use with the new LiveEvent entity, and its accessibility support has been enhanced with the inclusion of the closed-captioning standard CEA-708. 

    For more information on the above, please read the announcement blog.  

  • Link
    CRITICAL! Update to Powershell for Media Services: Removing support for ACS Keys next week.
    John Deutscher

    As part of our impending shut-down of ACS authentication and Key support in Azure Media Services, we will be removing support for ACS key management from Powershell as of next week. 

    If you have not begun your migration to use AAD authentication, you should begin so IMMEDIATELY! 
    In June we will be shutting off ACS key authentication support for all calls to Azure Media Services API. This means that all API calls and code that has not been migrated to use Azure Active Directory (AAD) auth will no longer work. 

    See our previous announcements on the required updates here:
    ACS deprecation Announcement

    Also see the full blog post with details on migration here:

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-media-service-aad-auth-and-acs-deprecation/

  • Link
    Media Services SDKs for Java and PHP support Azure Active Directory Authentication
    John Deutscher

    Azure Media Services client SDKs for both Java and PHP now support Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication. 

    Due to the upcoming deprecation of key authentication support for the Azure Access Control service (ACS) on June 22, 2018, all Media Services customers are required to upgrade their client SDK or REST API code to support Azure AD authentication.

    To get the latest Java SDK release, see the details in our Java documentation. To download the latest PHP SDK for Media Services, look for version 0.5.7 of the Microsoft/WindowsAzure package in the Packagist repository. For critical information about the deprecation of ACS, see our blog.


  • Link
    CRITICAL BREAKING CHANGE coming June 1, 2018 - ACS authentication deprecation for Media Services. Move to AAD quickly!
    John Deutscher

    This is a CRITICAL reminder of an upcoming BREAKING CHANGE to your code if you are using Azure Media Services. 

    On June 1, 2018, we will be shutting down ACS authentication key support. This is currently the primary way most customers are authenticating with Azure Media Services.  We are being forced off the ACS system due to that team's planned retirement of the backend ACS key services.  As we have blogged before, we have moved to Azure Active Directory for Authentication (AAD).   See my previous blog post here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-media-service-aad-auth-and-acs-deprecation/ 

    Starting in November 2017, we will be turning off the ACS key blade in the Media Services section of the Azure Portal. You will no longer be able to retrieve or rotate your existing ACS keys for authentication with Media Services.  We are doing this to promote the coming critical change more, and ask customers to move more rapidly to meet the June 1 deadline. You can still list your keys via the REST management API or through Powershell. 

    We are pleading directly to our customer base to IMMEDIATELY update your SDK or REST API code to use Active Directory (AAD) authentication. Do not delay, as this will be a breaking change to your code on June 1, 2018.   You production code using ACS keys will begin to fail authentication on that date. 

    If you have any questions, reach out on this forum or email amshelp@microsoft.com to reach our team. 

    Thanks,
    Azure Media Services team

  • Link
    Announcing: New Auto-Scaling Standard Streaming Endpoint and Enhanced Azure CDN Integration
    John Deutscher

    The Media Services team is very excited to announce some long awaited customer features, including both our new Standard Streaming Endpoints and Enhanced Azure CDN Integration.

    Our new Standard Streaming Endpoints offer auto-scaling and the flexibility to deliver your content to virtually every device through dynamic packaging into HLS, MPEG-DASH, and Smooth Streaming as well as dynamic encryption for Microsoft PlayReady, Google Widevine, Apple Fairplay, and AES128 without needing to worry about Streaming Units.  They also scale from very small to very large audiences with thousands of concurrent viewers through Azure CDN integration.  The new Streaming endpoints only cost a very low monthly fee, with no additional costs when they scale up based on demand.

    Moving forward, all new Media Services accounts will be created with Standard Streaming Endpoint by default. Addition to this all new media services accounts come with 15 days of free Standard Streaming Endpoint. This is great for developers who need to test out our MPEG-DASH and HLS advanced features without committing to spending for the month.  Existing Media Services accounts with classic Streaming Endpoint will not be automatically migrated to Standard Streaming Endpoint, but will have the option to migrate manually. Standard Streaming Endpoints is our recommended option for virtually all streaming scenarios and audience sizes.

     

    In addition to Standard Streaming Endpoints, we are also pleased to announce enhanced Azure CDN integration. With a single click you can integrate all the available Azure CDN providers (Akamai and Verizon) to your Streaming Endpoint including their Standard and Premium products and you can manage and configure all the related features through the Azure CDN portal. When Azure CDN is enabled for a Streaming Endpoint using Azure Media Services, data transfer charges between the Streaming Endpoint and CDN do not apply. Data transferred is instead charged at the CDN edge using CDN pricing.

     

    You can start trying out new Standard Streaming Endpoint and CDN integration or migrate your existing endpoints to Standard Streaming Endpoint using Azure Portal (Please note that AMS is not accessible via Azure Classic portal and have a new home).

    If you prefer writing code, you need to use REST 2.15 and upgrade to .NET SDK 3.8.0.5.

     

    For more information please check our blog post and Streaming endpoints overview.

     

  • Link
    Service Management APIs
    Milan Gada (MSFT)

    WAMS Service Management APIs are now live on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dn167014.aspx

    Feedback welcome

  • Link
    On-Demand Streaming usage metrics now available
    Anton Kucer - MSFT

    You can now monitor your usage of On-Demand Streaming for your media services accounts via the following three metrics that are now available via the Azure Media Services dashboard. 

    Streaming Data Out - Indicates how many Bytes of egress data has been used for On-Demand Streaming.

    Streaming HTTP Errors - Indicates how many HTTP Errors have occured. This includes server errors (e.g. HTTP 500 caused by blob store or a media services component) as well as typical client errors (e.g. HTTP 404 or 403). In a future update we will provide additional granularity so that you can track these errors individually.

    Streaming Requests - Indicates how many requests for data have been made for on-demand streaming.

    If there are other metrics that you would like to see available for on-demand streaming, add the request to our uservoice board - https://azuremediaservices.uservoice.com/

  • Link
    Submit Feature ideas to our User Voice
    John Deutscher

    We have a User Voice site that we have been using for IIS Media Services on-premises for many years that we would like to direct our customers to post new feature requests and vote on features for Azure Media Services as well.  We decided to mix the customer feature list, as many of the same feature requests will impact both our cloud and on-premises solutions for Media Services.

    Please post your feature requests to our User Voice Media Services site here:

    http://azuremediaservices.uservoice.com/

Announcement: 8

Azure Media Services announcement

  • Link
    Azure Media Services v3 API has now entered general availability
    John Deutscher


    Developers and media companies trust and rely on Azure Media Services to build media applications that include encoding, content protection with DRM, video indexing, live streaming, dynamic packaging, and content delivery at scale. The API now features: 

    •   A simplified development and management model that 

    • adds new capabilities across live, VOD, and Content Protection 

    • includes new presets to facilitate automated audio and video metadata extraction workflows in Azure 

    • A new live streaming (LiveEvent) entity with support for 8-second end-to-end low-latency streaming across both HLS and DASH (when using 1s GOPs)

    • Release of a CLI 2.0 command line module that supports all API features (including live!) 

    • Better integration experience with key Azure services like Event Grid, Logic Apps, and Functions 

    • Updated versions of the most requested client SDKs for .NET, .NET Core, Java, Go, Ruby, Python, and Node.js. 

    In addition, there are updates to Azure Media Player— AMP now includes a Low Latency profile to use with the new LiveEvent entity, and its accessibility support has been enhanced with the inclusion of the closed-captioning standard CEA-708. 

    For more information on the above, please read the announcement blog.  

  • Link
    CRITICAL! Update to Powershell for Media Services: Removing support for ACS Keys next week.
    John Deutscher

    As part of our impending shut-down of ACS authentication and Key support in Azure Media Services, we will be removing support for ACS key management from Powershell as of next week. 

    If you have not begun your migration to use AAD authentication, you should begin so IMMEDIATELY! 
    In June we will be shutting off ACS key authentication support for all calls to Azure Media Services API. This means that all API calls and code that has not been migrated to use Azure Active Directory (AAD) auth will no longer work. 

    See our previous announcements on the required updates here:
    ACS deprecation Announcement

    Also see the full blog post with details on migration here:

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-media-service-aad-auth-and-acs-deprecation/

  • Link
    Media Services SDKs for Java and PHP support Azure Active Directory Authentication
    John Deutscher

    Azure Media Services client SDKs for both Java and PHP now support Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication. 

    Due to the upcoming deprecation of key authentication support for the Azure Access Control service (ACS) on June 22, 2018, all Media Services customers are required to upgrade their client SDK or REST API code to support Azure AD authentication.

    To get the latest Java SDK release, see the details in our Java documentation. To download the latest PHP SDK for Media Services, look for version 0.5.7 of the Microsoft/WindowsAzure package in the Packagist repository. For critical information about the deprecation of ACS, see our blog.


  • Link
    CRITICAL BREAKING CHANGE coming June 1, 2018 - ACS authentication deprecation for Media Services. Move to AAD quickly!
    John Deutscher

    This is a CRITICAL reminder of an upcoming BREAKING CHANGE to your code if you are using Azure Media Services. 

    On June 1, 2018, we will be shutting down ACS authentication key support. This is currently the primary way most customers are authenticating with Azure Media Services.  We are being forced off the ACS system due to that team's planned retirement of the backend ACS key services.  As we have blogged before, we have moved to Azure Active Directory for Authentication (AAD).   See my previous blog post here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-media-service-aad-auth-and-acs-deprecation/ 

    Starting in November 2017, we will be turning off the ACS key blade in the Media Services section of the Azure Portal. You will no longer be able to retrieve or rotate your existing ACS keys for authentication with Media Services.  We are doing this to promote the coming critical change more, and ask customers to move more rapidly to meet the June 1 deadline. You can still list your keys via the REST management API or through Powershell. 

    We are pleading directly to our customer base to IMMEDIATELY update your SDK or REST API code to use Active Directory (AAD) authentication. Do not delay, as this will be a breaking change to your code on June 1, 2018.   You production code using ACS keys will begin to fail authentication on that date. 

    If you have any questions, reach out on this forum or email amshelp@microsoft.com to reach our team. 

    Thanks,
    Azure Media Services team

  • Link
    Announcing: New Auto-Scaling Standard Streaming Endpoint and Enhanced Azure CDN Integration
    John Deutscher

    The Media Services team is very excited to announce some long awaited customer features, including both our new Standard Streaming Endpoints and Enhanced Azure CDN Integration.

    Our new Standard Streaming Endpoints offer auto-scaling and the flexibility to deliver your content to virtually every device through dynamic packaging into HLS, MPEG-DASH, and Smooth Streaming as well as dynamic encryption for Microsoft PlayReady, Google Widevine, Apple Fairplay, and AES128 without needing to worry about Streaming Units.  They also scale from very small to very large audiences with thousands of concurrent viewers through Azure CDN integration.  The new Streaming endpoints only cost a very low monthly fee, with no additional costs when they scale up based on demand.

    Moving forward, all new Media Services accounts will be created with Standard Streaming Endpoint by default. Addition to this all new media services accounts come with 15 days of free Standard Streaming Endpoint. This is great for developers who need to test out our MPEG-DASH and HLS advanced features without committing to spending for the month.  Existing Media Services accounts with classic Streaming Endpoint will not be automatically migrated to Standard Streaming Endpoint, but will have the option to migrate manually. Standard Streaming Endpoints is our recommended option for virtually all streaming scenarios and audience sizes.

     

    In addition to Standard Streaming Endpoints, we are also pleased to announce enhanced Azure CDN integration. With a single click you can integrate all the available Azure CDN providers (Akamai and Verizon) to your Streaming Endpoint including their Standard and Premium products and you can manage and configure all the related features through the Azure CDN portal. When Azure CDN is enabled for a Streaming Endpoint using Azure Media Services, data transfer charges between the Streaming Endpoint and CDN do not apply. Data transferred is instead charged at the CDN edge using CDN pricing.

     

    You can start trying out new Standard Streaming Endpoint and CDN integration or migrate your existing endpoints to Standard Streaming Endpoint using Azure Portal (Please note that AMS is not accessible via Azure Classic portal and have a new home).

    If you prefer writing code, you need to use REST 2.15 and upgrade to .NET SDK 3.8.0.5.

     

    For more information please check our blog post and Streaming endpoints overview.

     

  • Link
    Service Management APIs
    Milan Gada (MSFT)

    WAMS Service Management APIs are now live on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dn167014.aspx

    Feedback welcome

  • Link
    On-Demand Streaming usage metrics now available
    Anton Kucer - MSFT

    You can now monitor your usage of On-Demand Streaming for your media services accounts via the following three metrics that are now available via the Azure Media Services dashboard. 

    Streaming Data Out - Indicates how many Bytes of egress data has been used for On-Demand Streaming.

    Streaming HTTP Errors - Indicates how many HTTP Errors have occured. This includes server errors (e.g. HTTP 500 caused by blob store or a media services component) as well as typical client errors (e.g. HTTP 404 or 403). In a future update we will provide additional granularity so that you can track these errors individually.

    Streaming Requests - Indicates how many requests for data have been made for on-demand streaming.

    If there are other metrics that you would like to see available for on-demand streaming, add the request to our uservoice board - https://azuremediaservices.uservoice.com/

  • Link
    Submit Feature ideas to our User Voice
    John Deutscher

    We have a User Voice site that we have been using for IIS Media Services on-premises for many years that we would like to direct our customers to post new feature requests and vote on features for Azure Media Services as well.  We decided to mix the customer feature list, as many of the same feature requests will impact both our cloud and on-premises solutions for Media Services.

    Please post your feature requests to our User Voice Media Services site here:

    http://azuremediaservices.uservoice.com/