Broadcast your next company meeting using Windows Media Encoder and Windows Media Server
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As more and more employees move to telecommuting it has become more of a challenge to get everyone together for something such as a company meeting. Luckily, technology has progressed to the point that you can now stream your company live over the Internet nearly hassle free. All you need is a PC equipped with a media capture card (such as a relatively inexpensive ATI All-In-Wonder) with Internet connectivity, and a Windows 2003 Server that is Internet accessible.
The first part of this project will take place on the capture PC. You will need to install the Windows Media Encoder 9 software. This software is free, and available from Microsoft. Once this is installed, and your capture card working you will need to set up your broadcast. The first step will be to open Windows Media Encoder, select New, and then choose Broadcast a live event.
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The next choice is how to get the media to the Windows Media Server. If your company event is taking place offsite, you may well have an Internet connection, but not the ability to have a real IP or point redirection. As this is often the case, Windows Media Encoder allows you to push your stream to the server. This allows you to broadcast event from behind a firewall with no changes necessary.
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Next you will need to tell Windows Media Encoder where to send the stream. You will need either a FQDN for the media server or just an IP address. Also you will need to assign a publishing point for the stream (We’ll talk about these more in the section on configuring the server). You can choose the name now for the Publishing Point and create it on the server later, or you can already have the name of the Publishing Point set up on the server and just fill in the information here.
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Next you can choose to archive a copy of your stream. This is always a good idea, because if for some reason you lose Internet connectivity you can still rebroadcast the uninterrupted file after the meeting is completed. Also, you can use this file later for video editing so you can have a more perfect representation of your meeting and burn it to DVD.
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Now you can see the confirmation of all of your settings. This allows you to not only confirm your settings to make sure everything is as you want it, but also to beginning broadcasting as soon as you click Finish.
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The first thing you will need to do on your streaming server is to install Windows Media Services. This is added from the Windows Components Wizard accessible via Control Panel | Add / Remove Programs. This is a fairly simple procedure, and does not require a reboot of your server.
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You can access the Windows Media Services snap-in via your Administrative Tools folder. From here you can completely control your new media server. The first thing to do is to test your server using the Test my server link on the main page. This will help you work out any issues you may have before you begin trying to stream content.
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Once you have tested your server, you will then need to add a Publishing point. You do this by selecting Create a broadcast publishing point on the main screen. This will take you to the Add a Publishing Point Wizard. We will not be able to use the wizard to create our publishing point, as configuring the encoder to push to the media server is only available under the advanced settings. We will go through the Wizard so that you can become familiar with it as it will serve most of your needs. If you wish to skip the wizard the advanced setup begins on Page 12. The first thing the wizard will have you do is to name your publishing point. You can either use the name you already established in Windows Media Encoder, or you can set the publishing point up here and point your Windows Media Encoder to the name you create here.
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You will next select the type of stream you will have. Since this is a broadcast of a live stream we will be selecting Encoder (a live stream). Once the meeting is completed we will be creating a new publishing point with the type of one file, so that we can replay the archived file we will create for those who couldn’t watch when it was live, or for those who just want to relive the memories.
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We only have one option available with the live stream. That is to allow users to share the playback experience. This means everyone will be watching the event as it happens. This does not allow for users to fast forward, rewind, or pause the broadcast, but we can change these options for the replay we will create later.
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At this point we reach the end of what we can do with the basic Presentation Point wizard in our scenario. If we were able to place our encoder box on the direct Internet or use port redirection, we could simply feed the IP address (or FQDN) to the media server at this point. As our encoder PC is behind a firewall without access to port redirection then we cannot continue. We will need to cancel and access the advanced wizard (accessible right clicking on Publishing Points in the Windows Media Services tool).
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This is the advanced configuration of a publishing point. The first thing we will have to select is the publishing point type. This is a live stream so we will select Broadcast. We will also name the point (see Page 8 for considerations on this). Finally we will select the Content Type. We will select Encoder (push), as this will allow us to receive the stream from the encoder. We will also use the default location of Push:*. This will only cause problems if more than encoder attempts to push to this server. If you will have multiple encoders pushing to this server, then you will need to uniquely identify each of them.
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After the creation of your publishing point you can now view it in the Windows Media Services tool. You will notice that there is a red stop icon over the publishing point. This is because your content is not being pushed to the encoder. Once your encoder begins pushing the stream to the server, the publishing point automatically starts. You will then be able to connect to it by using http://u00fediaServerFQDNu00efPublishingPointNameu00f3C/i>. Entering this URL into your browser will automatically open Windows Media Player to play the stream.
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One last thing we will look at is archiving the broadcast on the streaming server. While we are already archiving on the encoder, this will not only give us a second copy, but allow us to begin a replay of the broadcast within minutes of the original ending. You can reach the archival setting by going to the Properties tab of the publishing point. Under there select WMS Archive Data Writer. From there you can choose to begin archiving when the publishing point starts, and choose where to place the archive. You can place the archive anywhere media server has access to. You can also use wildcards in the file name, so that if you have multiple broadcasts coming in to the encoder, you can record each of them individually and not overwrite the previous broadcast archive.
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We will now look at how to set up a replay of your live broadcast. We will begin by accessing the Add Publishing Point Wizard. We will then name the publishing point. If you wish to use the same name as the one used to broadcast the live event, then you will need to delete the original one first. If you wish to use a different name, then there is no need to delete the original.
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Next we will select the Content Type of One File. As we had no issues with our Internet connectivity during the broadcast, we will use the archive created by our streaming server. If there were issues, we could copy the archive created by the encoder to any location that the streaming server can access, and use that file.
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We will make this an On-demand publishing point. This will allow our users to have full control of the playback experience. This will allow multiple clients to be able to watch the stream at different points, with full access to controls such as fast forward, rewind, and pause.
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You will then simply browse to the location of the archive file. This can be anywhere the server has access to, and is accomplished using a standard Windows Explorer interface.
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Next you will have the option of enabling logging for the publishing point. This will allow tracking of each IP address that connects to the publishing point. Use of this is strictly limited to personal choice, and company needs and standards.
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After completing the wizard your publishing point is active and ready to receive clients. From the tool you can view the activity on the publishing point. You can not only see the amount of system CPU that particular publishing point is using, but you can also see the number of clients connected currently, peak users, and the amount of bandwidth being used by the publishing point.
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