2012年10月24日
By 蒂姆Siglin 特约编辑
专题文章

流媒体服务器2012:新功能，新机遇

在上周的视频基础设施峰会，与流媒体欧洲, I had yet another opportunity to host an annual panel looking at the state of applications, 包括流媒体服务器和平台. 来自五家公司的代表Adobe, Anevia, CodeShop, 微软, 职业-分享对他们的产品和应用的见解.

The panelists had four questions to answer, each company contributed equally to the discussion.

流媒体服务器有什么新功能?

The first question centered on what has changed on each server platform in the past year, 自2011年10月上次座谈会以来. Adobe's Steve Allison led off with an obvious one: Adobe has dropped the word Flash from its media server products, 现在被称为Adobe Media Server. 这反映了现实, 据艾利森说, of the move towards MPEG DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) as well as the move to HTML 5-based players.

特里斯坦Leteurtre, Anevia的联合创始人之一, said his company works with various enterprises and organizations that want to use each of the various streaming server products represented on the panel. He said the biggest change seen over the past year has been the accelerating number of requests for DASH and the total lack of interest in WebM.

“VP8，或WebM，今年死了，”Leteurtre说. "Everyone wants DASH which is now included in many RFPs, especially DASH using H.264和碎片化MP4文件."

CodeShop's Arjen Wagenaar said his company spent the last year trying to support as many output formats as possible, as well as focusing on all the digital rights management (DRM) schemes that are required across a variety of platforms. Wagenaar said his company supports four of the five DRM schemes designated in the Common Encryption Scheme for UltraViolet and DASH.

微软's Alex Zambelli said 微软 has seen a rapid shift in the last year, thanks to both the deprecation of Windows Media Server and the advent of Windows Azure.

微软的旗舰服务器现在是IIS,赞贝利说, referring to the internet web caching server from 微软 that competes against the open-source Apache server. “我们还更新了IIS媒体服务，以专注于电视服务, added DRM key rotation and are making a big move from on-premise to the cloud with Windows Azure."

One core example of the momentum behind Azure is the fact that Expression Encoder will now primarily be a cloud-based service rather than an on-premise product. Zambelli went as far as to say that the desktop version of Expression Encoder would receive maintenance updates but that "product enhancement in the cloud" will be the new norm.

“编码和原始服务以及PlayReady也都将走向云端,赞贝利说, noting that a preview of Azure media services—the final version of on-demand services—will be available later this year.

最后, 皇马的大卫·史密斯丢了一个重磅炸弹, 暗指职业 Helix通用服务器v15, 我们将在另一篇文章中介绍.

“Helix是一个媒体交付平台, 首尾相连,史密斯说。, "from our SDK for Android to our current DASH implementations of MPEG2 Transport Stream and MP4. 我们的DASH已经完全就位并准备好了, 包括使用多个编码器进行测试, 对于今天认真推出DASH的人来说."

新功能，新机遇

The second question asked panelists to discuss what new business opportunities exist based on each platform's expanded features. 他们提到了一些机会, 哪些可以被视为即将到来的会议点播流媒体的一部分, 但这里有几个亮点:

微软:向云的迁移提供了更低的成本和更大的可扩展性. The idea of a platform as a service (PaaS) with Azure will first resonate with high-volume encoding clients and then move to lower volume clients.

CodeShop:当DRM可以移动到边缘时，机会就存在了, the combination of the common file format (CFF) and encryption scheme (CES) makes it easy to change the DRM system. CodeShop says they are targeting catchup services and music concerts / pay-per-view content.

职业: Seeing opportunities in DASH / HbbTV and Multiple-DRM requirements. 而目前还没有明显的实时广播网络(RBN)云游戏, given Real's early forays into OVP and cloud services—Real sees a cloud deployment on Amazon's Web Services (AWS) as a key opportunity.

Adobe: Adobe也看到了AWS云的机会, has simplified its pricing to help content owners and producers make the move to cloud-based encoding, 代码转换, 和服务. Adobe也看到了将DRM“从堆栈向下”移动到编码器的机会. 最后, 它看到了原始缓存在pull模型上久经考验的使用, 比如英国广播公司在夏季奥运会期间使用的广播, 比“推”源缓存好吗, 部分原因是它允许适当的广告插入和改进的广告定位.

采用MPEG DASH的障碍

小组成员还被问及批准DASH的影响, to which they unanimously agreed the biggest limiter was availability of DASH-compliant players for any or all live / on-demand profiles. Anevia的Leteurtre指出，至少有八种不同的DASH配置文件, which makes the choice of profiles supported in first-generation DASH players a difficult choice. 我们将在另一篇文章中详细讨论这个问题.

流媒体服务器的下一步是什么?

最后, the panelists were asked about features most often requested that aren't yet in their server products. We've had very candid answers to this question in years past, this year was no exception.

微软's Zambelli led off by noting that the implementation of DASH on the server, 通过Azure, would allow 微软 to add in much-requested options for on-the-fly encryption. Zambelli said 微软 will be starting with PlayReady and then possibly adding other CES DRM schemes.

CodeShop和职业都表示，字幕是一个一致的要求, 这是每个公司都在追求的. 皇马的史密斯说标准会有所帮助, 就像SMIL在过去是时间文本的标准一样, Code-Shop's Wagenaar said that a review of the disparate standards—such as 608, 708, 甚至QuickTime计时文本也将有助于推动行业向前发展.

Adobe's Allison said that dynamic re-encoding is an oft-requested feature that the company is working on, Anevia's Leteurte rounded out the answers by saying that his company if focusing on building "a consistent model that is simpler to use" when it comes to players and apps. Given Leteurtre's role for nearly a decade as the product manager for the popular VLC player, we look forward to seeing what a good measure of disciplined coding and user interface experience can add to the overall industry movement towards DASH.