Posted by: kurtsh | June 12, 2010

BETA: IIS Transform Manager 1.0 (Alpha release) now available

Whether you have libraries of content or a steady stream of user-generated content that you want to convert from one video format to another, IIS Transform Manager can help. Transform Manager, part of the upcoming IIS Media Services 4.0, provides simple integrated video encoding and batch conversion of video files to the IIS Smooth Streaming format and the MPEG-2 Transport Stream adaptive streaming format supported by Apple devices.

Transform Manager integrates directly with Expression Encoder 4 to allow you to use “watch folders” to queue up multiple encode jobs on your server and deliver them directly to IIS Media Services 4.0 Web folders as IIS Smooth Streaming presentations, complete with Silverlight player templates. Transform Manager can also convert your IIS Smooth Streaming presentations directly into MPEG-2 Transport Streams and .m3u8 manifests for delivering content to Apple devices. An SDK comes with Transform Manager, allowing you to write your own plug-in Tasks that can be used with Transform Manager to support custom actions, third-party encoders, or your own encoding applications.

Scenarios
Transform Manager 1.0 Alpha has been designed and tested for the following scenarios:

  • Convert existing content library. Using the integrated Expression Encoder 4 task, transcode an existing content library of Windows Media Video (WMV) or MP4 files and schedule for multiple-bit rate (MBR) encoding to the IIS Smooth Streaming file format. Using this workflow, you can set up watch folders that point to existing content, transcode, and deliver full Smooth Streaming and Silverlight player experiences to your Web server.
  • Constant ingest/ transcode. Create a new watch folder that allows an incoming run rate of up to 100 files per minute to be queued and encode to Smooth Streaming file format with the integrated Expression Encoder 4 task, using a configurable preset and a Smooth Streaming player template. This scenario assumes files continuously arrive at the watch folder at a fairly constant incoming rate.
  • Transmux to Apple HTTP Live for on-demand. Drop existing Smooth Streaming presentations into a watch folder to batch-transmux the Smooth Streams to MPEG-2 TS format and convert the Smooth Stream manifest to an .m3u8 playlist file, enabling delivery from the IIS Smooth Streaming module in IIS to Apple mobile devices.
  • Task-chaining. Create custom job templates that combine multiple tasks into a unique workflow.
  • Custom tasks. Use the Transform Manager Task API to create custom tasks that integrate third-party encoding applications, media processing, asset upload, or Web services into the workflow.

Workflow
Several of the Transform Manager 1.0 Alpha scenarios listed above can be represented by the workflow diagram for the Expression Encoder 4 task shown in the following figure.

image
Figure 1. IIS Transform Manager Alpha Expression Encoder 4 task

Futures
The Alpha release of Transform Manager 1.0 only supports operating on a single IIS server and uses the local Task Scheduler for job management. In future releases, the capabilities of the scheduler will expand to support scaling out Transform Manager across multiple servers.

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