Category Archives: Analyse

REST cookbook

A new small blog post where I sticked informations or links about Rest and Restful :a style of architecture for distributed softwares. This post will be updated each time I have new links.

Restful is stateless. The main goals of Restful architecture are scalability, availability and agnotiscs technologies between software (via an common interface). A new Internet draft is out, it names RESTful Authentication Pattern and will help to design your architecture.

If you will deploy this type of architecture, you can read this slideshare which give best practices to design API (a webinar is available too). To design a Restful architecture, you need to design your URI. There is another good document made by Apigee : Web API Design – Crafting interfaces that Developers love [PDF file]

Here is some examples of API architectures:

To conclude, there is a tool to assist you on your development : Rest-client. It’s a Java app (so cross-platform) to test your Restful webservices.

Release of cloud services to manage media contents

The beginning of this year 2013 is full of news in the transcoding cloud world. The two main platforms announced the release of their own solutions :

I made some posts to introduce Azure Media Services (part 1, part 2) available after May  2012. Here is a quick overview to compare those different services.

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Precision about HTTP streaming format in Adobe Media Server

ams To begin this new year, I make this post on a subject which can introduce misunderstandings. Previously, Adobe named it streaming server : Flash Media Server (aka FMS) v4.5. In october 2012, Adobe release a new version and recalled the server: Adobe Media Server (aka AMS) v5.0.1. Some acronym used in FMS are the same in AMS, but this is not the same “products” (e.g. PHLS). In this post, I will give some input on live streaming format and especially about security applied on. Continue reading

Mistserver – a new multimedia streaming server – First overview

Mistserver is a open-source multimedia streaming server developed by DDVTech a company based in Netherlands. This server will support some technologies : HLS, HDS, Smooth Streaming, RTMP, …

For the moment, HDS, RTMP and progressive download are available. You can push too livestream via RMTP. The company have two others solutions : MistStewardMistCenter.

DDVTech positions his solution in a competitive market with some actors : Adobe Media Server, Wowza, Red5, Apache, …

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Packaging adaptive bitrate VOD content on the fly

The actual market on the OTT use Adaptive Bit Rate video format over HTTP (Smooth Streaming, HTTP Dynamic Streaming, HTTP Live Streaming and MPEG-DASH soon) to deliver the content. I make this analyse without integrate the DRMs system which is a big topic itself. Here is an overview of the different format available for each platform.

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The matrix is a kind complex; all this technologies are multibitrate, so for one asset, you need to transcode for each bitrate. Each technology is different and use his own specification :

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If I follow the specifications given by the manufacturers (HLS) or if I’m basing on 4 bitrates for the others formats (Smooth Streaming, HDS), I need to transcode more than 20 times the same asset.

There is an option to avoid and reduce significatively the number of transcoding tasks : the packaging on the fly. This article will only analyse the on-demand side, not the live. Continue reading