Any chance of IIS Smooth Streaming on channel 9?

Sure would be nice to be able to seek through videos without having to wait for them to fully load first. And being able to see some videos in higher definition when in full screen mode would be pretty sweet too.

@CKurt: Wow. I have to say that really does look poorly on ISS Media Services and Silverlight when Microsoft can't get it working on they're own sites =/. The viewing experience would be better if all the videos were hosted on YouTube and embedded in the site. I don't mean to put anyone out by saying that. But video seeking doesn't seem like a big feature to expect from video sites =/. That's just my opinion on it. Maybe there's a better reason that they couldn't get it working though..

They tested it on here a while back, and I thought it worked fine. I'd be happy even with buffering and variable bitrates. My work web connection just isn't fast enough for the default bitrate.

I would like it for videos that have text in them because I can handle 720p on my internet connection so it would make stuff like video captures of Visual Studio much more readable.

@dentaku: Text in the videos is the biggest argument against smooth streaming.  For most people, variable bitrate means the bitrate drops, sometimes significantly, and text in videos becomes completely unreadable.  It's the non-whiteboard videos where smooth streaming works well.

I never stream anything longer than about 5 minutes from C9 any more -- my connection just doesn't work well enough for that.  I background download the 2MB versions and watch them offline when I get the chance.  Then I get full quality and can do whatever skipping around I want.

It would be nice if it were possible to default to smooth streaming, but have a user switch on the player to disable the bitrate downgrade for whiteboard-type videos that need the full resolution.

imho, i think variable bitrate is only really useful for live video feeds where buffering is really bad thing. I'd be a lot happier if the site worked like YouTube or Vimeo, letting you choose your own quality level and be able to seek to any part of the video without having the pre-load the whole thing.

24 minutes ago, battlebottle wrote

imho, i think variable bitrate is only really useful for live video feeds where buffering is really bad thing. I'd be a lot happier if the site worked like YouTube or Vimeo, letting you choose your own quality level and be able to seek to any part of the video without having the pre-load the whole thing.

go to the forum "site feedback" and ask for that feature.

seems like it would not be too hard as they offer downloads in different formats.

@ryanb:

*sarcasm*

I guess that's why the last 3 PDCs all had their lectures available online using SmoothStreaming.

*sarcasm off*

I think SmoothStreaming works wonderfully even for screencasts and whiteboard videos. I'd love to see it here on C9!

I think there is an announcement for  IIS Media Services role on Windows Azure at the Silverlight Firestarter several days ago.

Maybe Channel9 can support this when its get actually released.

@ryanb: When I posted that I was thinking about PDC and how easy it was to read text compared to regular streaming C9 videos. It's chunky at first but eventually it becomes much better (at least on my 15Mbit cable connection). The Olympics in HD on CTV was also great once it figured out I have a fast enough connection for HD streaming.

I would also be happy with having the videos on Vimeo in HD, I don't care, but I know Smooth-Streaming works great for many people.

I'd like to see the video tag from HTML 5 used honestly. Silverlight crashes Firefox 4 Beta, and sometimes freezes on the final version of Firefox as well (plugin container executable just freaks).

Plus, at school, there is rarely silverlight installed. But most computers have Safari (if they're on Mac) or Chrome, both of which would support the video tag. Native video formats is where its at.

@dentaku: Sure, but that's exactly the point.  I don't dispute that smooth streaming can give a good experience IF you have a good, reliable connection.  It works fine for me at home.  But if you don't have a connection that can reliably maintain the high bitrate, it can be a problem on certain types of content.  That's why using smooth streaming with a user option to temporarily disable it when necessary would give the best of both worlds.

Wait.. I have an INGENIOUS idea... how about actually using SmoothStreaming when, you know, you're streaming, and still provide a high quality download link for those that can't handle the streaming?

I wonder if that has been done before?

Yes, I can be sarcastic sometimes

@Stebet:

Not sure if you've read my posts, but the main reason I'd like smoothstreaming used would be to add features that we see on other websites that host non-live videos like vimeo and youtube. being able to seek through videos without having to pre-load them and being able to switch to higher res/quality video streams. I don't see why these features wouldn't be as welcome on channel9 as they would be on other sites. From what i gather IIS smooth streaming has support enabling this.

Honestly, I usually have the videos on here playing in the background while I'm working on something else. If I really need to see the code they're working on, I download the high quality version. I would love to see a smooth streaming option.