Video streaming to Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Surface..

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hello all,

Can someone point me in the right direction for the recommended/native way to stream to Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface RT devices? All of my videos are H.264+AAC encoded and stream just fine via HLS and RTSP to iOS and Android devices (and the ROKU). I need to add the new set of Windows devices to the mix now too.

Thank you,

Steven

2

I’d love some info on this one too. I haven’t been able to find anything for live streaming to IE10/Metro short of getting a site’s .swf whitelisted by microsoft.

3

Hello all,

Can someone point me in the right direction for the recommended/native way to stream to Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface RT devices? All of my videos are H.264+AAC encoded and stream just fine via HLS and RTSP to iOS and Android devices (and the ROKU). I need to add the new set of Windows devices to the mix now too.

Thank you,

Steven

Another approach is to use an HLS implementation for Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone 8. Then you can directly stream the same streams you deliver to iOS apps to Windows Store Apps

BTW: We provide the 3ivx HLS Adapter which does precisely that :wink:

4

We will try to write up a more complete description of how it is done later but here are two links to articles that describe how to do it:

Announcing: Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 RTW!!!

How to build your first HTML5 Windows 8 Smooth Streaming Application

This is the right place to start.

Charlie

5

Steven,

What are the encoding details: key frame frequency, and profile.

If not already , try h.264 Baseline 3 or lower, and a 2 second key frame frequency.

Richard

6

Steven,

Great! Thanks for the update.

Silverlight requires key frame frequency between 1 and 4 seconds, but 2 seconds is recommended. There is not an easy way to change key frame frequency in Wowza. Even with the Wowza Transcoder it is not straightforward, it would require tweaking parameters, and I’m not completely sure it is possible. So, yes, you should do it in the encoder.

What player are you using on WP?

Richard

7

The 1-4 seconds is mentioned in our tutorials and you will see log messaging about this if key frame frequency is out of range.

Thanks a ton for that player link. I know of the smf player, but didn’t know it worked on Mobile.

Richard

8

Steven,

This limitation is documented in all our relevant tutorials. You will also see WARN log messages if you are configured for Smooth and this factor is out of range. I don’t have any other reference.

Richard

9

Not sure if there’s been any movement in this regards (I couldn’t fine any), but my content seems to work fine in the flash player that comes with IE10. The only problem is that the version of IE10 from the Modern UI wont play it. I used the meta tag fix found here to deal with it for now: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/jj193557%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

10

I’ve successfully streamed to WP8 using Microsoft Expression 4 and a

I know this solution doesn’t incorporate Wowza, but maybe it’ll encourage them to support this feature as well in order to truly reach all devices.

If you’re interested in how I did this send me an email.

I’m very interested in that. Can you send me a PM? I was unable to contact you since your PM seem to be disabled. Thanks

11

Hi Charlie,

Is there any update on the instruction? I need to support a VOD and Live stream for Windows 8 and Windows Surface tablet on HTML5. Please advice on how to do it.

Thanks

ARMAN

12

Yup… saw those too. I was thinking along the lines of an in-browser experience with no app store requirements, but it seems that we don’t have anything other than the plain Jane

13

I found this article which seemed to help a bit:

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-turn-on-alignment-for-live-microsoft-smooth-streaming-smoothstreaming

The problem is, there is precious little documentation on what “smoothPacketSortTime” value is supposed to mean? It is now working on our Windows 8 app. But still struggling to view a live (smooth stream) on a Windows Phone. Seems to work intermittently, but not consistently. And definitely better than before which didn’t work at all.

Does anyone have any success story with Wowza, live video, and Windows Phone?

Thank you!

Steven

14

Steven,

What are the encoding details: key frame frequency, and profile.

If not already , try h.264 Baseline 3 or lower, and a 2 second key frame frequency.

Richard

The H.264 profile was already at Baseline. But the keyframe frequency was set to 240 frames (8 seconds). I changed it to 60 frames (2 seconds) as you suggested and it works! Yes, it works after changing the frequency!

But, the question now is, we will have clients that may have their keyframe set to 240 frames because this is the default setting in Wirecast. Is there something that can be changed on the server side (Wowza) to make this work without worrying if the client side is set just right?

Thank you again!

Steven

15

Thanks for the information. This is all very helpful.

We are using this player in our Windows Phone app:

http://smf.codeplex.com/releases/view/88970

So far it seems to work on Windows Phone 7.x. I’ll let you know if we find a problem with Windows Phone 8 and in regular Windows 8 itself.

Can you refer us to a website that gives us this kind of information (about key frame frequency)?

Thank you again.

Steven