1. Download the free JW Player from www.jeroenwijering.com and unzip the file somewhere on your computer
2. Open the newly created directory, you should see several files. Upload the following files to your web server, or to your GravityLab home directory.
   • readme.html
   • swfobject.js
   • player.swf
3. Open readme.html in your favorite HTML or text editor.
4. Find the code that begins with <div id=”container”> and ends with </script>. This is the section of code you’ll need to edit and then copy and paste into your own page.
5. Find this line of code:
   s1.addParam(”flashvars”,”file=video.flv&image=preview.jpg”); and replace it with the following (for FLV files):
   s1.addParam(”flashvars”,”streamer=rtmp://arecibo.gravlab.com/streamingvideo/&file=AccountName/YourFile.flv”);
   OR, if you’re streaming mp4, .mov, or .m4v files, replace that line of code with:
   s1.addParam(”flashvars”,”streamer=rtmp://arecibo.gravlab.com/streamingvideo/&file=mp4:AccountName/YourFile.m4v”);
6. Keep in mind that arecibo.gravlab.com is just one of our servers, and if your files are on a different server, then you will replace arecibo.gravlab.com with servername.gravlab.com. If you need help with this part, contact us and we’ll get you squared away.
7. After you’ve copied and pasted that section of code and customized it to point to our servers, you can save it and view it in your web browser.

“Microsoft^® Expression^® Encoder, a feature of Expression Media, offers encoding, enhancement, and publishing of rich media experiences to Microsoft Silverlight. ”

Features Include:

Better Encoding

VC-1 advanced authoring SDK integration: by adopting the new VC-1 authoring SDK, Expression Encoder 2 is able to author better quality video faster. We’ve exposed a set of presets for tuning the encoder as well as detailed settings with comprehensive tooltips for the advanced compressionist.

New profiles, and video codecs for streaming media: Encoder 2 supports a number of new modes and codecs including Quality VBR, WMA Pro (stereo), WMA Lossless, 24 bit audio and audio/video encoding stream selection.

• Improved MPEG source support: We now include an MPEG 2 decoder in the product to give a consistent story across platforms. The decoder we ship supports transport streams (so you are able to work with sources that originated from HDV cameras. Seeking performance and accuracy has been greatly improved.
• Better multi-core performance: we are not done with performance enhancements by any means but have made decent progress in Expression Encoder 2, particularly on multi-core systems.
• Improved aspect ratio handling: by default, the new Profile Adaptive mode is selected which preserves the width specified in the profile but varies the height according to the aspect ratio of the source. Translation: it just works. Additionally, when Source compression is used the aspect ratio mode as well as pixel aspect settings are fixed up to ensure source compression will just work.
• Pre-processing enhancements: the new Pre-processing palette contains a number of settings for controlling resizing (Bicubic, Lanczos, Supersampling in addition to nearest neighbor and bilinear), de-interlacing and audio options. As well as detecting the need to de-interlace from the header of the file, the user can manually override the defaults. In addition to the V1 capabilities, Expression Encoder 2 includes inverse telecine as well as a new pixel-adaptive de-interlacer. On the audio side, there is a volume leveling filter as well as a volume control.

Better Silverlight Interactive experiences

The second bucket of functionality covers improvements to Silverlight output.

• New templates: We’ve revisited both the functionality and the design of our core Silverlight Templates. As before these support core functionality such as Chapter points and close captioning and are user extensible.
• Template Parameters: We have had a lot of requests for more and easier control of how templates behave. Examples include not automatically playing (or buffering) the video, being able to control the background color of the HTML and more. In Expression Encoder 2 we’ve added parameters to templates. The parameter system is extensible enabling developers to easily expose custom things e.g. skin primary color etc.

Download Expression Encoder for Microsoft Silverlight

Typically, in any given streaming setup, there are two computers. One is the server, which requires either DSS or QTSS, and the other is the broadcaster, which requires Quicktime Broadcaster (Mac OS X only). The server can be either Windows or Mac, but the broadcaster must be a mac. For more detailed instructions on installing DSS on a Windows machine, follow these instructions. For Mac users, continue following these instructions:

1. Download DSS
2. Download QuickTime Broadcaster
3. Make sure you have Apache Web Server installed.
4. Obtain the URL from QuickTime Broadcaster.
5. Post it on a website on your Apache Web Server.

The installation is a breeze, and there is virtually no configuration whatsoever. You might only want to open a couple of ports, and then you’ll manage everything from QuickTime Broadcaster. You’ll be able to stream from your webcam, or just transmit a file from your HDD.

That’s it. In no time, you’ll be using the same solution that YouTube Mobile uses to transfer videos in 3GP.

Steps to Set Up a Server-Side Play List

1. Create Windows Media content and place it in the ASFROOT folder on the Windows Media Services server.
2. Open the Windows Media Administrator.
3. From the left side of the Administrator, select Unicast Publishing Points.
4. In the Broadcast Unicast Publishing Points section, clear the use wizard option. Click Broadcast, and then choose New.
5. For alias name, type a descriptive name.
6. For the path type, choose Remote Windows Media Station, and for the URL use msbd://localhost/alias (where alias is the same name you used in the previous step). This provides the connection point for Windows Media Player clients.
7. Next, on the left side of the administrator, choose Multicast Stations.
8. Click Stations, and then choose New.
9. Create a new station.
10. Give the station the same name as in step 5, and select distribution only.
11. Provide a descriptive program name. For the stream name, use the file name of the first file that you want to be in the playlist. Make sure that both the Start program once wizard is finished and Replay stream objects once finished (loop) options are selected.
12. Select Advanced Streaming Format (.asf) file.
13. Specify the unicast path to the file that you placed in the ASFROOT folder. This is typically mms://localhost/filename.asf.
14. Once the wizard is finished, the program and stream should play.

To Add Files (Streams) to the Playlist

1. Open the Windows Media Administrator.
2. From the left side of the administrator, select Multicast Stations.
3. Select the program that contains the playlist that you want to modify and ensure that the program is stopped.
4. Click Streams, and then choose New.
5. For the name, it is best to use the file name of the file that you want to stream.
6. On the Source/Destination tab, specify a unicast URL for the file that you that want to add. This is typically like ms://localhost/filename.asf.

When you connect with a Windows Media Player client to the broadcast unicast publishing point, use the server name or IP address and the publishing point alias from step 5 in the first part of this section.

Your multimedia, when pushed through mms://, rstp:// or http://via the 554 port protocol, is being pushed through Windows Media Services 9, Helix Universal, or Quicktime Streaming Server respectively. What http:// can, considering video MIME types with apache, is port 80. So if you link to video through http: but you specify the 554 port (ie:http://helix.gravlab.com:554/youraccount/yourfile.mov) http: loses all meaning in terms of defining a standard Port, because it is using the Quicktime Streaming Server 554 port.

mms://media.gravlab.com/your-account-name/filename.avi

or

http://media.gravlab.com/your-account-name/filename.avi

You are able to deliver all the major streaming media formats from one account. You simply FTP your video to your account, and then link to your video or audio assets from your web site. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to deliver streaming media to your audience.

Once you open your account, within 24 hours you can begin uploading your video. If you need your video encoded to streaming media formats, we can do that as well from your source media.

Most companies do not have accurate estimate of the number of simultaneous users on a particular portion of their web site. In general, web stat logging software typically does not provide this much granularity. In fact, if your client tells you that they expect a hundred thousand, a half of million, or even a million or more simultaneous users, it is probably time to raise a red flag.

Unless you are building the next version of Yahoo’s IM, MSN’s IM, or AOL’s IM, your web site will not see this amount of simultaneous traffic. Chances are your client was talking about the amount of total page views or hits over the course of some time frame.

For this reason, it is important to understand what we are looking for. The number of simultaneous users that will be using your application at peak load is the maximum amount of users that will be using your application at the same time. It is not the total number of users who will ever use your application. It is not the number of people who have used your application in a single day. The number of simultaneous users that will be using your application at peak load will likely be much lower than the total number of users of your application.

How to Estimate Number of Simultaneous Users:

Since this the number of simultaneous users is such an important piece of information for determining which hosting plan you choose for your account and the bandwidth capacity you will need for your application, we will walk you through one way of estimating this number when the only information you have is very general web page statistics.

We’ll use a hypothetical case: The ACME Company intends to launch a 10 minute marketing video linked off the home page of their web site for 20 days to promote an upcoming product launch. They have stats from their last product launch that showed 150,000 people viewed the promotional materials during that 20 day campaign. In this example, we also know that almost 50% of this traffic occurred in the first 5 days of the campaign.

To find an estimate for the number of peak simultaneous users, we’ll try to find the single hour in which the most users viewed the video and then make an assumption that 1/6 of the visitors in that hour will be watching the video simultaneously. The 1/6 factor is a simplifying assumption based on the fact that the viewers will be distributed evenly in that peak hour and each will be viewing the video for only 10 minutes of a possible 60 minutes in the hour. Therefore at any one point in the hour, on average, only 1/6 of all of the viewers in that hour would have been viewing the video simultaneously (given a random distribution).

In the example above, since we don’t know how many visitors our site will have during the peak hour, we’ll need to make some more assumptions. First, since we know that about 50% of the traffic will occur during the first five days, let’s assume that there is a spike in traffic during the first five days, and then traffic gradually decreases. With these assumptions, and the fact that we expect 150,000 viewers over 20 days with about 50% of those in the first five days, we can use Microsoft Excel to model up an estimate of daily web traffic.

In this example, our model would suggest that the day with the largest amount of viewers would be Day 4 with 16,250 viewers. The next step is to find the hour with the greatest amount of expected viewers. Making the assumption that this marketing campaign will be aimed predominately at US audiences, we can use Excel to develop a similar model of estimated traffic per hour during the day.

The distribution of traffic into the various hours as shown above roughly models the traffic we’ve seen for certain videos deployed on macromedia.com. Using this model with our ACME Company example we’ve now identified that the single hour during the entire campaign (20 days) with the most viewers will be from 11AM – 12noon PST on Day 4 and that there will be 1,950 viewers at this time.

We can now multiply the 1,950 viewers during the peak hour by 1/6 to get the estimate for the peak number of simultaneous users. In this case, our estimated number of peak simultaneous viewers of this video will be 325.

Examples of Calculating Simultaneous Users

In this example, the application is a one­way data­casting system that streams real time monitoring info to a group of end users. In this example, the Media Server will serve only one stream to each user.

Simple Connections Formula

A simple way to calculate simultaneous users can be made with the
following data points:

Total Users over a known time period

Average Connection Time for a user (normalized)

Formula:

U(s) = U(T) / (T / A)

U(s) = Simultaneous users
U(T) = Total users
T = Time period
A = Avg. connection time

Windows Media Player renders audio and video content in the same way, whether a file is on a Windows Media server, a Web server, a network server, or a local hard disk. The server does not affect the quality of the media. What the server does affect is how the packets of data that contain the media are delivered to Windows Media Player.

A Windows Media server is designed to handle busy, congested networks and low-bandwidth connections to client computers that are running Windows Media Player. This section describes what you should consider before you encode content that will be hosted on a Web server, and then shows you how to configure Windows Media Encoder 9 Series.

Encoding Content for a Web Server
If you stream by using a Web server instead of a Windows Media server, keep these things in mind:

• A Web server is not designed for streaming media, so playback is more likely to be interrupted by periods of buffering. Buffering occurs when Windows Media Player is not receiving audio and video data packets fast enough. Windows Media Player has to stop to refill its memory buffer before it can proceed with playback. To help correct for this, you may have to encode files at a lower bit rate than you would if they were being streamed from a Windows Media server.
• Web servers do not support intelligent streaming. Multiple-bit-rate files contain a number of video streams—each of which are encoded at a different bit rate. These files enable the server to perform intelligent streaming. When using intelligent streaming, Windows Media Player sends feedback to the Windows Media server about current network conditions. The Windows Media server then delivers the most appropriate video stream for the current bandwidth from among the streams that are contained in the file. Because a Web server has no mechanism for dealing with intelligent streaming, it sends the entire file, which contains all the streams, and only the highest bit rate stream plays. This can result in wasted bandwidth and a poor user experience.

Procedures
The procedures in this section describe how to configure Windows Media Encoder 9 Series for Web server streaming. You can download the encoder from the Windows Media Web site. These procedures include:

• How to configure Windows Media Encoder 9 Series to encode a file.
• How to create a Windows Media metafile.
• How to add a tag to an HTML file.

To configure Windows Media Encoder 9 Series to encode a file

1. On the toolbar, click New Session. The New Session Wizard starts.
2. On the Wizard tab, click Convert a file.
3. On the File Selection screen, type both the file that you want to convert (the source file) and the file that you want to create (the output file).
4. On the Content Distribution screen, click Web server (progressive download). When you click Web server (progressive download), only those encoding options that pertain to encoding files for Web servers are displayed.
5. On the Encoding Options screen, select how you want to encode your audio and video from the lists, and then click to select the appropriate bit rate check box.
6. On the next two screens, type display information and review your settings.
7. After you quit the wizard, click Start Encoding.

If you want to edit or create a new a profile, click Properties, and then click Edit on the Compression tab. In the Custom Encoding Settings dialog box, you enter the primary settings that the encoder will use to create your content. Keep in mind that the file you encode for a Web server must be able to play as it is downloading (progressive download). Therefore, for the smoothest playback, you should choose CBR (Constant Bit Rate) mode and only one bit rate.

Note: Creating and managing profiles is a method provided for advanced users with a detailed knowledge of bandwidth capacity, media settings, and codec usage. For more information, see Windows Media Encoder Help.

After you encode your files, there are two more steps to prepare your content for streaming from a Web server: creating Windows Media metafiles with .wax, .wvx, or .asx file name extensions, and adding tags to your HTML files. The HTML tag points the user’s browser to the metafile, which points Windows Media Player to the content (the Windows Media file). You must use a metafile to reference the media because a direct reference to the media in an HTML tag will cause many browsers to attempt to download the media rather than stream it.

To create a Windows Media metafile

1. Open a text editor, such as Notepad.
2. Type the following metafile script, but replace the URL with that of your file. Reference the audio or video file just as you would any other Web file.

3. You can place the metafile in the same folder as that of your digital media file. If you do so, you can use a relative path, which is simply the name of the file. The REF line would look like this:

4. Save the text file using the name of your digital media file followed by the .wvx extension if the metafile points to a file with a .wmv extension, or .wax if the metafile points to a file with a .wma extension, such as YourFile.wvx. You can also use the .asx file name extension for either audio or video.

When an end user clicks the reference on the Web page, the metafile is downloaded and Windows Media Player opens. Windows Media Player opens the metafile, and then opens and plays the Windows Media file from your Web server.

Progressive download works even when the bandwidth is not sufficient for real-time playback; it simply buffers incoming data and delivers delayed playback. However, since it is simply a web server delivering your content through the HTTP protocol, many simultaneous demands for that media can result in a poor audience experience with significant buffering while the player waits for the content from the server. The back end infrastructure of the GravityLab content delivery network provides client / server negotiation for delivering the content in a timely, efficient manner for the best possible audience experience. This is important, since your online user’s patience, speaking in statistical averages, is about 4 seconds before they move on.
Streaming movies do not store a copy of the movie on the client computer, making them inherently more difficult to copy without the consent of the movie’s owner. This can be an important consideration, and is one reason why people choose streaming over progressive download.

Streams take up a specified amount of bandwidth, whereas HTTP file downloads proceed as quickly as the connection allows. It is therefore easier to manage the bandwidth usage of a streaming server than of a web server delivering progressive-download movies. With the proliferation of high speed internet connections at home, and because the vast majority of the US workforce has high speed access at work, delivering video content at predefined multiple bit rates (streaming) makes sense.
Broadcasting allows you to deliver coverage of live events as they happen, or to provide real time “chat” between computers. GravityLab provides live video broadcasts that can scale up as your audience grows.
To sum up, if your movie includes live coverage, you must use broadcasting. If bandwidth management and copy discouragement are paramount considerations, streaming may be your best choice for stored content. If bandwidth is not a concern, you want users to be able to receive you media regardless of connection speed, and you don’t mind if users obtain the actual copies of your audio and video content on their computers and portable devices, progressive download may be viable.

Using a Windows Media Server vs. a Web Server :

A Windows Media server is often the best way to stream media because Windows Media Services is designed specifically for that purpose, and all Windows Media components work together to enhance the end-user experience. Intelligent streaming, for example, involves Windows Media Encoder, Windows Media Services, and Windows Media Player.

This section compares the features of a Windows Media server and a Web server and describes the best way to determine which option is right for you.

Comparing server features
The features of each type of server are compared in the following table.

Table 2. Comparison of features for streaming Windows Media-based content

The following list describes each feature. If you are interested only in the features that a Web server can provide, then Web server streaming may be the right option for you.

• Stream through most firewalls. Firewalls are special servers that filter information that flows between the Internet and private networks or intranets. Many firewalls are set up by default to block data that isn’t from a Web server—data such as a Windows Media stream. Firewalls can be reconfigured to allow this data into the intranet. Alternatively, Windows Media servers can be configured to stream using the same protocol as Web servers, HTTP.
• Stream content with Digital Rights Management. Content that has been packaged using Microsoft Windows Media Rights Manager can be streamed or downloaded from either type of server. Windows Media Rights Manager helps content owners distribute licensed digital media over the Internet with superior audio quality.
• Fast Streaming. A feature of Windows Media Services that allows for a combination of streaming, downloading, and caching to provide the best user experience. Fast Streaming includes Fast Start, which downloads the first few seconds of the content at as high a bit rate as possible, so the wait to start playing is reduced; Fast Cache, which uses available bandwidth to cache as much content as possible ahead of playback; Fast Recovery, which sends error correction data with the data packets instead of waiting for an error to occur; and Fast Reconnect, which enables the server to automatically restore connections that are lost.
• Stream without downloading. Content from a Web server is downloaded. If Fast Cache is enabled on a Windows Media server, content might be cached to enhance playback. However, this feature can be disabled if you want your content streamed only.
• Broadcast (live). Web servers can only host on-demand content (files). A Windows Media server can host content for on-demand delivery or as a broadcast. Broadcasting enables you to stream live content (events that occur in real time), and files and playlists that are played back from the server. Some examples of broadcasting are streaming live radio and television signals, and Internet radio stations.
• Intelligent streaming. As mentioned earlier, this feature requires an interaction between a Windows Media server and Windows Media Player to optimize the stream for the current available bandwidth.
• Optimized for streaming Windows Media content. Windows Media Services was designed for the special requirements of streaming media. For example, Windows Media Services handles resources on a computer better than a Web server when streaming. A Windows Media server is capable of delivering more concurrent streams on a given computer by making more efficient use of a computer’s CPU and network bandwidth. A Windows Media server sends data at the same bit rate as the content. A Web server on the other hand does not control the bit rate at which it sends a stream. Consequently, two or more concurrent streams from a Web server could saturate a network’s bandwidth.

  Files are streamed from a Web server by using a method called progressive downloading. This means that a file plays as it downloads to the user’s Internet cache. This can be a concern for users, because digital media files often consume a large amount of hard disk space. Also, a user cannot seek to different parts of the content, until the entire file is downloaded.

• Indexing. This feature provides end users with a means of fast-forwarding and rewinding through a file that is being streamed, which requires interaction between a Windows Media server and Windows Media Player.
• Administering and logging. You can control how a Windows Media server manages live content and files, and monitor overall system activity in real time. You can also create detailed logs that include data such as individual client connection information and server events.

Linking to mp3 streams from your mp3 hosting account requires a text file with the extension .m3u. This file has the URL to your mp3 stream in it. For instance, if a mp3 playlist named “Blues” was playing from the Streaming Server, and the domain name of the server was stream.mydomain.net, the m3u file would contain the link:

http://stream.mydomain.net:8000/blues

The “:8000″ is the port for streaming mp3 playlists from Darwin Streaming Server. If you enable port 80 streaming the “:8000″ is not required. The .m3u file could be placed on any web server, and linked to a web page with the standard tag. For instance, to link to a file named “blues.m3u” from a web page in the same directory with the file, the link could be:

Play the blues

Note: For .m3u files to work correctly, your web server must be configured to deliver the correct mime type for .m3u files:
audio/x-mpegurl .mp4

If you are running Windows NT Server and IIS 3.0 and want to configure the MIME types, create a registration entry file with a .reg file name extension:

1. Open Microsoft Notepad or another text editor.
2. Type in the following text. (Do not cut and paste the text from the Web page.)

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet
/Services/InetInfo/Parameters/MimeMap]

“video/x-ms-asf,asf,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-asf,asx,,5″=”"
“audio/x-ms-wma,wma,,5″=”"
“audio/x-ms-wax,wax,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wmv,wmv,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wvx,wvx,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wm,wm,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wmx,wmx,,5″=”"
“application/x-ms-wmz,wmz,,5″=”"
“application/x-ms-wmd,wmd,,5″=”"
3. Save the file with a .reg file name extension.
4. Double-click on the file to add the entries to your registry.
5. After creating this file, stop and then restart all IIS services.

Apache

1. Ensure that you have server administration privileges. If you do not have these privileges, ask your server administrator to update these MIME type extensions.
2. Change directories to /httpd/conf.
3. Edit the file srm.conf.
4. Add the following lines to the end of the file, or to where the other AddType video/* entries are found:

AddType video/x-ms-asf asf asx
AddType audio/x-ms-wma wma
AddType audio/x-ms-wax wax
AddType video/x-ms-wmv wmv
AddType video/x-ms-wvx wvx
AddType video/x-ms-wm wm
AddType video/x-ms-wmx wmx
AddType application/x-ms-wmz wmz
AddType application/x-ms-wmd wmd

If you add these to the end of the file, make sure that the file ends with a blank line.
5. Save changes and quit the editor.
6. Restart the Web server.

.ra audio/x-pn-realaudio
.ra audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin
.ra audio/x-realaudio
.ram audio/x-pn-realaudio

.rv video/vnd.rn-realvideo

Windows Media Services 9 Series can use RTSP, HTTP, or MMS for streaming. It uses RTSP when trying to connect to Windows Media Player 9 Series. If that attempt is unsuccessful, the server uses MMS or HTTP to connect to the Player. This process is called rollover. Earlier versions of Windows Media Player do not support RTSP, but they do support MMS. If the server cannot connect to the Player by using MMS, then the server tries to connect using HTTP. Windows Media Player automatically tries to rollover to different protocols according to its Windows Media property settings.

Protocol rollover for Windows Media Series 9 for URLs starting with “mms://”:

1. RTSPU (RTSP using UDP)
2. RTSPT (RTSP using TCP)
3. MMSU (MMS using UDP)
4. MMST (MMS using TCP)
5. HTTP

When Windows Media Player 9 Series accesses a stream from Windows Media Server 2003 with Windows Media Services 9 Series, it normally uses RTSP protocol and only uses MMS or HTTP protocols if a RTSP connection is not available. Old streaming media recording software as well as old versions of Windows Media Player can only download Windows Media streams using MMS or HTTP Protocols. In most cases streaming media recording works only because of the Protocol Rollover.

Servers running Windows Media Services 9 Series can stream files that are in the Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA), Windows Media Video (WMV), Advanced Systems Format (ASF), and Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG)-1 Layer 3 (MP3) formats. However, Windows Media Services cannot use the intelligent streaming feature to stream files in MP3 format.

You can use a Windows Media server to stream files in other digital media file formats if the appropriate media parser plug-in is enabled. A media parser plug-in translates the information contained within the file to a format that can be used by the Windows Media server and Windows Media Player. To find out whether a media parser plug-in is available for the format you want to stream, contact the digital media file format developer.

Audio Hosting / Video Hosting / Windows Media Hosting