Two Worlds Collide: Smooth Streaming Meets Flash Player
微软 today announced that it is launching a preview version of a Smooth Streaming plugin for the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) player. Developers can use Smooth Streaming capabilities in any OSMF-compliant player, as well as Adobe's own Strobe player.
"We are pleased to announce that Windows Azure Media Services team released a preview of 微软 Smooth Streaming plugin for OSMF,Cenk Dingiloglu写道, a program manager on the Windows Azure Media Services team, 在一篇微软IIS博客文章中. He also provided a link, for developers who want to integrate the plugin, to a set of documents and licensing requirements.
In a series of meetings last Thursday on the 微软 campus in Redmond, 华盛顿, the Windows Azure Media Services team laid out their strategy on a number of fronts, including the extension of Smooth Streaming client software development kits (SDKs) to embedded devices, iOS设备, 玩家框架
During one of those 微软-sponsored meetings, hosted by 微软 senior technical evangelist Alex Zambelli, Dingiloglu and Mike Downey discussed the most recent addition of OSMF support, noting that Smooth Streaming shares similarities when it comes to codecs and the use of the fragmented MP4 file.
"Support for the same audio and video codecs, H.264和AAC, 分别,丁吉洛卢说, "provides the opportunity to use fMP4, leveraging the best of both the OSMF framework and the Smooth Streaming Client SDK."
The Smooth Streaming plugin will provide some key features of Smooth Streaming, such as on-demand functionality (play, 暂停, 寻求, 停止), but will also use OSMF built-in API hooks to support two key features: multiple audio language switching and maximum playback quality selection.
OSMF支持后期绑定, 基于其使用的fMP4, allowing multiple languages to be accessible to the end user without requiring all possible languages' audio tracks to be multiplexed together into a single transport stream, iOS设备所需要的方式.
OSMF and a Player support also provides 微软 a way onto the Android OS platform, 太, making it possible for Smooth Streaming content to reach Android-powered smartphones and tablets.
"You can build rich media experiences for Adobe Flash Player endpoints using the same back-end infrastructure you use today to target Smooth Streaming playback to other devices like Win8 store apps, 浏览器等等," Dingiloglu wrote in the IIS blog post.
微软 isn't claiming the new OSMF plugin is ready for prime time quite yet, but I was able to see a working version of Smooth Streaming within an OSMF player during last week's visit.
事实上, one of the more impressive demonstrations was that of a playlist/manifest file that contained both Adobe .f4v文件和微软 .供应管理协会(ism)文件. The OSMF player seamlessly switched between the two fMP4 file formats, allowing content owners to intermix content from either format for playback.
“因为这是一个预览版, 你可能会遇到问题, 有特性请求, 或者想提供一般的反馈,丁吉洛卢写道. “我们都想听听! 请使用 Smooth Streaming plugin for OSMF Forum thread 让我们知道什么是有效的, 什么不是, and how we can improve your Smooth Streaming development experience for OSMF applications."
All of this raises the question around Smooth Streaming as it relates to MPEG DASH, the ratified dynamic adaptive streaming standard. 像Adobe, which noted it will continue to develop its own HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) flavor of HTTP-delivered adaptive bitrate streaming, 微软 sees a benefit in continuing to push the envelope with Smooth Streaming.
The company made it clear that it fully supports DASH, and yet it sees Smooth Streaming as a test bed in which it can continue to innovate for major events like the Olympic Games, which served as a catalyst - over the past three Games - for a number of innovations that now find their way into both Windows Azure Media Services and DASH.
The Smooth Streaming plugin requires browsers supporting Flash Player 10.2 or higher and also requires OSMF 2.0. 微软提供了 licensing details for the Smooth Streaming plugin 对于感兴趣的开发者.
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