IIS Smooth streaming low quality on start

Question

I m hosting some adaptive streaming video on windows azure and I have noticed that at the beginning the video start with the lowest avaiable bitrate. That is a big issue.

Answer 1

As the other answer mentioned, use MMPPF (previously Silverlight Media Framework). Much more full-featured player and relatively easy to customize (with video tutorials, too).

For the bitrate - yes, the Smooth Streaming algorithm is designed for the lowest latency start possible - therefore, lowest bitrate/video chunk is used on start. However, it is possible to do what you want.

You will need to do 2 things, first:

Add a handler to the player's OnMediaPluginRegistered event. In that event, check to see if it's an IAdaptiveMediaPlugin - you'll need the instance of that plugin. Here's a sample...

    IAdaptiveMediaPlugin _adaptivePlugin = null;

    void OnMediaPluginRegistered(object sender, Microsoft.SilverlightMediaFramework.Core.CustomEventArgs e)
    {
        var adaptivePlugin = e.Value as IAdaptiveMediaPlugin;

        if (adaptivePlugin == null) { return; }

        if (_adaptivePlugin == null)
        {
            _adaptivePlugin = adaptivePlugin;
        }
    }

Once you have that, wait for one of the media open events to fire (MediaOpened or something), and you will now have access to a method on IAdaptiveMediaPlugin called SetVideoBitrateRange(...).

For example:

_adaptivePlugin.SetVideoBitrateRange(minBitrate, maxBitrate, true);

That should give you what you need.