The 2.0 release was built using the Silverlight 5 Beta bits, which already expired so some users were getting the message “This application was created for an expired beta release of Silverlight. Please contract the owner of this application and have them upgrade their application using an official release of Silverlight” when trying to use the application.

Happy editing,

Ez.

My first try to fix this was, obviously, reinstalling the IIS Media Services package. Sadly, that didn’t help.

After that, I started to think that the problem could be in the handler mapping, so I took a look at them in IIS and I found that the SmoothHandler in the Default Web Site has an Unspecified path type instead of the usual File path type.

Changing the path type back to File, solved the issue.

Alternatively, if you don’t have local configurations, you can revert the Handler Mappings to its parent.

Hope this helps,

Ez.

A few months ago, Microsoft published the Beta version of the IIS Transform Manager. This new release contains an incredible set of new features, explained here by Chris Knowlton.

Back in the Alpha days, I wrote an IIS Transform Manager Task that takes an Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor (formerly Rough Cut Editor) Project XML file (which includes the EDL) as input, and outputs a new encoded video that represents the MMP Video Editor edits.

The Beta version introduced a few breaking changes (mainly due to interfaces renaming) so I decided to publish an updated version of the task, so you can use it without having to perform the changes.

The updated task can be downloaded from here.

Happy Transforming!

Microsoft just released the SP1 version of the Silverlight Rough Cut Editor.

This service pack addresses some of the most requested requirements by the community.

In this post you will find detailed information about what this release contains.

Service Pack Content

In this service pack you will find:

• The RCE migrated to Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4 and IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5.
• Issues fixed that improve CPU performance.
• Bug fixing.
• An enhanced setup experience with automation scripts for Windows 7, Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2.
• Composite Stream Manifest generation integrated with the RCE.
• An updated version of the Composite Stream Manifest generator that supports  manifest compression and the new IIS Media Services 4.0 manifest format (duration based).
• A new Assets Data Provider that retrieves the assets from a plain XML.
• A source code refactoring that takes advantage of the Smooth Streaming Plugin provided by the Silverlight Media Framework.

New Setup Experience

Two packages were released as part of the SP1. One contains the source code and the other one contains the binaries ready to be hosted.

In both packages you will find a start here document that will help you to install the Rough Cut Editor. They also contain a new set of scripts to automate the deployment in 3 platforms: Windows 7, Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2.

The scripts will first detect if the pre-requisites required to run the the RCE are installed and then, will perform all the operations required to leave the RCE up and running in your environment.

After installing the package, you will find a shortcut in the desktop to run the solution.

Composite Stream Manifest Generator Additions

The IIS Media Services 4.0 has a new manifest format (duration based instead of time based) and also adds support for a new repeat tag “r” to obtain more compression in the manifest.

The new format is compatible with the previous version of the Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) , but the manifest compression feature it is only compatible with SSME >= v1.5.

For more information about these changes, please read this blog post from Giuseppe Guerrasio.

The Composite Stream Manifest generator now outputs CSMs following the new proposed format and also has the ability to compress the output manifest.

In the Test Page of the CSM generator, you will find a new checkbox that will allow you to test the manifest compression.

You can read more about the CSM generator in this blog post.

Composite Manifest Generation integrated with the RCE.

How many times you were using the RCE and wanted to quickly generate a CSM to check how your edits look like? Before SP1, you were required to export the RCE project, copy its content and paste it on the generator test page, generate the manifest, copy the generation output and host the CSM. Looong process. You can imagine how quickly that turns into a repetitive task.

The RCE SP1 has the CSM generator integrated as part of the Output module. Now you select a CSM output, click Export and the CMS will be generated and hosted for you. The generated CSM ends up in the RCE.Web/encode/CSM directory.

I hope you find this new release useful. If you have comments, questions, suggestions or any issue, please visit the Rough Cut Editor community site.

Happy editing!

My friend John Deutscher is leading these efforts. John has a lot of experience with media management software and a passion to make developers lives’ easier. He was also one of the masterminds behind the Rough Cut Editor (RCE), a lightweight, Web-based Silverlight video editing tool. As a client tool, it submits edit decision lists, but does not include the logic for transcoding. But it’s highly extensible, and from time-to-time, we’ve been asked about extending the tool to add an encoding workflow process.

The real question here is whether the RCE should take care of that. Instead, Why not take advantage of the tools available out there and use them to manage the complexity of the encoding process?

This post is result of exploring the feasibility of using the IIS Transform Manager to take an RCE Project XML file (which includes the EDL) as input, and creating the necessary task to output a new encoded video that represents the RCE edits?

So with that goal in mind, I started to build a proof of concept of the scenario, depicted in the following diagram:

PoC Diagram – (icons from picol.org)

The Ingredients

• Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 or higher
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (required for use with Expression Encoder 4.0)
• Silverlight Runtime
• IIS Transform Manager 1.0 (Alpha)
• Microsoft Silverlight Rough Cut Editor configured to use the File System Data Provider (check the related topic on the RCE documentation)
• Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Trial or Pro
• Sample videos (required for use with the RCE and the File System Data Provider)

The Recipe

OK. Let’s assume we have all the ingredients in place and that we are ready to start.

The first thing to do is to create the Transform Manager Task. This task will parse the RCE Project XML, extract the edits metadata and use that information with the Expression Encoder 4 API to perform the encoding.

I will not copy all the code for the Task in the post (you can download that from here. Make sure to include into the libs folder the EE4 and IIS Transform Manager assemblies in order to build the project), but instead let me highlight a few things:

1. To create a custom Task for the IIS Transform Manager you must implement the ITransformTask interface (Microsoft.Web.Media.TransformManager.Sdk.dll)
2. Once you have created the task, you must create a task definition xml file (the task definition schema can be found here).
   The following is the Task Definition for the RCE Project task:

   <taskDefinition xmlns=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/iis/media/v4/TM/TaskDefinition#“> <name>RCE Project Task</name> <id>7F8A89DA-1DF9-409A-9869-A5CDCA017998</id> <properties namespace=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/RCE/V1#” prefix=“rce“> <property name=“preset” value=“” /> </properties> <description xml:lang=“en“>Invokes Expression Encoder 4 to produce a video based on the edits metadata defined on an RCE Project File</description> <inputDirectory></inputDirectory> <outputDirectory>RCEProjectTaskOutput</outputDirectory> <taskCode> <type architecture=“x86” >RCE.TransformManager.Tasks.RCEProjectTask, RCE.TransformManager.Tasks, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null</type> </taskCode> </taskDefinition>

   As you can see, it defines a property called preset, which is intended to be used to provide the Expression Encoder 4 preset.

   - The input directory points to the directory where the source videos are located (which is the same directory used on the RCE File System Data Provider configuration)

   - The output directory will be later used by an XCopy task defined on the Job Template that will copy the resulting files back to the source videos directory (making the resulting video available to the RCE)

3. Register the task with the IIS Transform Manager. A great tutorial on how to do custom task registration can be found here, but it basically involves two steps:- Copy the custom task assembly to C:\Program Files\IIS\Transform Manager (on a x86 computer) or to to C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS\Transform Manager (on a x64 computer)

   - Copy the custom task definition XML file to the %ProgramData%\Microsoft\IIS\Transform Manager\Configuration\Task Definitions directory

Once you have your Transform Manager task ready and configured, launch the Internet Information Services and configure the IIS Transform Manager.

First, stop and start the IIS Transform Manager service so it can detect the new task, then follow these steps to create a job template.

1. Create a New Job Template (Transform Manager > Job Templates > New) and fill the Name field.
2. Click Add to launch the Add Task dialog.
3. Select the RCE Project Task and the XCopy Task and click OK.
4. Make sure that the task definitions list shows the RCE Project task on top of the XCopy task (use the Move Up / Move Down buttons to adjust it)
5. Select the RCE Project Task and click Edit.
6. Fill the input directory field and the preset property. Click OK to save.Note: I’m using one of the predefined presets of EE4 (VC1-ScreenEncoding VBR for Silverlight), but you can use any you prefer.
7. Select the XCopy task and click Edit.
8. Fill the fields as described below. Click OK to save.
   • Input Directory: RCEProjectTaskOutput
   • Arguments: RCEProjectTaskOutput\* “d:\media\demo\videos” /E /Y /INote: (replace d:\media\demo\videos with the input directory you defined on the RCE Project Task) 
9. Click OK to save the job template.

Now it is time to add the Watch Folder. For the sake of simplicity, in the PoC, I will use the folder where the RCE exports the project output. This folder is located at

RCE.Web\encode\Queue.

1. Create a new watch folder (Transform Manager > Watch Folders > New)
2. Fill the watch folder settings:
   • Name. The name of the folder
   • Physical Path. The watch folder path (%RCEDirectory%/RCE.Web\encode\Queue)
   • File Filter. Use *.jobreq here, which is the extension the RCE Export operation output.
   • Job Template. Select the RCE Job Template
3. Click OK to save the watch folder.
4. Finally, select the watch folder and click Enable and then click Start. This will leave the watch folder ready to use.

Great!. Everything is cooked. Let’s see how it tastes.

1. Launch the RCE and perform a couple of edits. I’ve four videos on my library and I created an edit of around 1 minutes and 56 seconds using two of those videos.
2. Select the Output Tab, and click Export to export the RCE project.
3. Open the IIS and go to the Job Monitor option of the IIS Transform Manager. You will see that your job is running!!
4. Once the encoding is completed, the second task of the job is going to be executed, copying the new file on the folder you configured.
5. Refresh the RCE (press F5), and you’ll see a new video on the library, with the exact same duration of the edit you created.

The End

We just proved that the RCE and the IIS Transform Manager can easily work together. The IIS Transform Manager’s extensibility allowed us to create a simple task to integrate the RCE export process with it and to output a new encoded video that represents the RCE edits. And this is just the beginning…

Hope this helps,

Happy Transforming!

THE CODE AND THIS POSTING IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND CONFERS NO RIGHTS.

• When I set the position on the Smooth Streaming Media Element, the displayed frame is not updated.
• I can only get the frame displayed to update when playback is resumed.

The default behavior of the SSME doesn’t allow to seek inside fragment (chunks) boundaries, so if you seek to any position in within the same 2-seconds chunk of video, you always get the same frame displayed. The change to enable this is really simple, but is one of those hidden gems of the SSME.

The Smooth Streaming Media Element can be configured using an XML file in which you can set a wide range of settings. One of these settings is actually the one to enable accurate seeks on the SSME.

4 Steps to success

1. In your Silverlight project, add an Xml file and named it config.xml. You add the file to the Silverlight project, because it needs to be part of the XAP package.
2. Copy the following content into the file:
   

   <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?> <LiveSmoothStreamingSettings>   <BufferingEngineSettings ForceAccurateSeeks=”true”/> </LiveSmoothStreamingSettings>

3. Save the file.
4. Add the following attribute in XAML for the SSME.
   

   e.g., <XYZ:SmoohtStreamingMediaElement ConfigPath=”config.xml”>

   Alternatively, you can set this programatically:

   this.ConfigPath = “Config.xml”;

Hope this helps.

Enjoy!

One of the main features used during the Olympics was the ability to generate Composite Stream Manifests (CSM) based on projects the editors created using the Rough Cut Editor.

Today, we are happy to announce that the Composite Stream Manifest generator code was just published on the RCE site on Code Gallery: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/RCE.

Once you download the source code package, you will find the following folder structure:

The ManifestGenerator folder contains the source code for the CSM generator and a WCF service ready to consume which converts your RCE projects into Composite Stream Manifests.

The WCF service contains two operations:

[ServiceContract]
public interface IManifestGeneratorService
{
    [OperationContract]
    string GetSubClipManifest(Uri manifestUri, double markIn, double markOut);

    [OperationContract]
    string GetManifest(string projectXml, string pbpDataStreamName, string adsDataStreamName);
}

• The GetSubClipManifest operation will generate a CSM of one clip. This operation is useful when you want to quickly generate a CSM based on a Mark In and Mark Out you set to a clip. The parameters expected are the clip manifest Uri and the mark in and mark out values (in ticks).
• The GetManifest operation will generate a CSM based on an RCE project. This operation will allow you to convert all the cuts you made on the RCE into a manifest that can be played by the Smooth Streaming Media Element. The parameters expected are the RCE project xml and the desired names for the ads and markers text streams.

The package also contains a test page that will allow you to test the service without having to deal with the WCF service. Thanks to JPG for the UI.

I hope this helps you to generate Composite Stream manifests. If you have questions, suggestions or comments, please visit us on the RCE forums.

Happy editing!.

Ez.

Julian and I had the opportunity of being speakers at the event, where we talked about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) and we explored the capabilities of this framework. We went through the basic principles of MEF and we also showed how it can be used to create more decoupled, testable and maintainable applications.

If you want to see the video (is in Spanish) please visit this link.

More Information about MEF

If you want to dig deeper on MEF, I recommend you to read Glenn Block’s blog.

Enjoy

• Composite Manifest Support for Rough Cut Editing scenarios in SSME by Vishal Sood
• New Composite Manifest support for building Rough Cut Editing (RCE) scenarios with Smooth Streaming by John Deutscher

I’ve been working with CSMs for three months now, so in this post I would like to share with you the lessons I’ve learnt during the process of creation and usage of the CSMs.

There are a few common mistakes and issues you might face during that process, so I hope this post will be helpful for the community. 

Configure IIS to serve .CSM files

In order to do that, you have to add a mime type entry on IIS for the .CSM extension on every IIS server that is serving up the .csm files. The mime type for the .csm must be “text/xml”. You can do this on the IIS Manager. Also you can achieve the same by editing the applicationHost.config and adding the following line:

 <mimeMap fileExtension=”.csm” mimeType=”text/xml” />

“Error encountered on HEAD request to manifest uri <your manifest> for <position> clip in RCE manifest”

This will likely be the first issue you will encounter after trying to use a CSM. When using a CSM the Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) attempts to do a HEAD request on the manifest for each clip to make sure that the content hasn’t been moved (and if it has, it will used the new URL on the response).

There are two changes you have to make in order to fix this issue.

The first one is related to an existing known-issue on the applicationHost.config file of IIS. This server bug prevents the On-Demand smooth streaming handler from responding to HEAD request. To fix this go to the Smooth Streaming Readme page and check the Known Issues section, specifically the “Configuring the SmoothHandler handler mapping to process HTTP Head requests” item.

The second change must be done on the clientaccesspolicy.xml file, essentially to indicate that HEAD requests are allowed. To fix this make sure that your clientaccesspolicy.xml file includes http-methods=”*”or http-methods=”GET,HEAD,POST”:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<access-policy>
  <cross-domain-access>
    <policy>
      <allow-from http-methods=”*” http-request-headers=”*”>     
        <domain uri=”*”/>
      </allow-from>     
      <grant-to>     
        <resource path=”/” include-subpaths=”true”/>
      </grant-to>     
    </policy>
  </cross-domain-access>
</access-policy>

“Caught exception trying to parse main manifest: V2 Manifest: Audio stream requires CodecPrivateData attribute”

This is because the CSM contains a clip that is referring a V1 Manifest, which is not a valid source for a CSM.

“Caught exception trying to parse main manifest: First video (audio) chunk in clip <position> [start time = <start time>, duration = <duration>] does not contain clip start position <clipStartPosition>”

This message indicates that the first chunk time + the first chunk duration of the reported stream is smaller or larger that the clip’s begin position. Therefore the first chunk time + the first chunk duration of the stream must contain the clip’s begin position.

“Caught exception trying to parse main manifest: Last video (audio) chunk in clip <position> [start time = <start time>, duration = <duration>] does not contain clip end position <clipEndPosition>”

This message indicates that the last chunk time + the last chunk duration of the reported stream is smaller or larger that the clip’s end position. Therefore the last chunk time + the last chunk duration of the stream must contain the clip’s end position.

Different Audio encoding settings in the CSM clips

If you have clips with different audio encoding settings, then the playback will suddenly stop. Due to a limitation on Silverlight, the audio settings have to be the same. The Silverlight pipeline is not able to handle audio property changes on the fly. So make sure that the audio of the clips are being encoded at same bit rate.

Sparse stream data within the clip

This will likely not cause any issue, but as today having sparse stream data within a clip is not supported I decided to include it on this list.

As you see, there are a couple of things to have in mind when creating and using composite stream manifests. I hope this post encourages you to use this amazing feature.

Happy streaming!

So, I started to dig and I came up with the following code:

// Live Streaming Section Path
const string LiveStreamingSectionPath = "system.webServer/media/liveStreaming";

// Change this settings with your values

// Site name
string siteName = "Default Web Site";
// Application name
string applicationName = "/SmoothStreaming";
// Publishing point filename
string fileName = "LiveSmooth.isml";

ServerManager serverManager = new ServerManager();

// Gets the site from IIS
Site site = serverManager.Sites[siteName];

// Gets the application from IIS
Application application = site.Applications[applicationName];

// Gets the LiveStreamingSection from the site configuration
ConfigurationSection section = site.GetWebConfiguration().GetSection(LiveStreamingSectionPath);

// Gets the ConfigurationMethodInstance to get the available publishing points
ConfigurationMethodInstance instance = section.Methods["GetPublishingPoints"].CreateInstance();

// Sets the input parameters of the GetPublishingPoints method
instance.Input["siteName"] = site.Name;
instance.Input["virtualPath"] = applicationName;

// Executes the method
instance.Execute();

// Gets the PublishingPointCollection associated with the method output
ConfigurationElement collection = instance.Output.GetCollection();

// Looks for the publishing point and Invokes the desired method of the Publishing Point.
// In this case we are calling the Start method (others supported functions are "Shutdown" and "Stop")
foreach (var item in collection.GetCollection())
{
    if (item.Attributes["name"].Value.ToString().Equals(fileName))
    {
        var method = item.Methods["Start"];
        var methodInstance = method.CreateInstance();
        methodInstance.Execute();
        break;
    }
}

Remember that in order to use the previous code, you must have references to the following assembly:

• Microsoft.Web.Administration.dll (can be found at IIS Directory %windir%\System32\inetSrv)

Hope this helps.

Happy streaming!