Speaking of Azure

Some time ago, Microsoft published an excellent infographic on its download page where you could see all the services and capabilities that the MS Cloud offers its users. This is a fairly dense document and I am going to take advantage of it to describe in an understandable way the characteristics and technologies that are described.

In this chapter of the series I am going to discuss the Media Services, or multimedia services that it offers.

Media Services, or Multimedia services, for large broadcasts

While it has taken decades of years to be able to broadcast moving images over the television airwaves to the entire world, creating a dense network of space satellites along the way, one could say without a doubt that with the advent of digital transmissions the entire globe can be covered with audiovisual transmissions.

On the other hand, broadcasting via the Internet, despite improving a lot in quality and performance, continue requiring infrastructures of power, bandwidth and very high costsAnd who combines the necessary hardware and software requirements for this type of service: The Cloud and, in this specific case, Azure Media Services.

Since April 2012, Azure presents the Media Services that it defines as follows:

Media Services include cloud-based versions of many existing technologies from the Microsoft Media Platform and our media partners, including input, encoding, format conversion, protection of both on-demand and live streaming content and functionalityWhether to enhance existing solutions or create new workflows, Media Services can be easily combined and managed to create custom workflows to suit every need.”

Services offered by the platform

• Ingestion This service is the one that allows you to upload multimedia content to the Cloud. Considering that the files are especially large, the UDP protocol can be used instead of HTTPS to obtain a higher transmission speed; and allowing the content to be encrypted before it is uploaded using 256-bit AES, complying with security requirements.
• Encodingallows you to compress the video with different codes H.264, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VC-1 or Windows Media Video.
• Conversion What is the service that allows us to convert our video packages into standard streaming formats such as Smooth Streaming or Apple HTTP Live Streaming.
• Content Protection Azure provide DRM (Digital Rights Management) as a content protection solution. Currently DRM technologies are compatible with Microsoft PlayReady Protection and MPEG Common Encryption. In the near future it will support BuyDRM, EZDRM or Civolution.
• ON-Demand Streaming You can upload encrypted content to the Cloud and configure virtual servers to transmit the material via streaming, either using Azure CDNs or any other on the market such as Akamai, Limeline, etc.

In summary, we have access to the necessary requirements to be able to broadcast audiovisual material globally, as demonstrated in its intensive use for the London 2012 Olympic Games.