Microsoft Azure Management Portal updates for Azure Media Services

Last week, the Azure Media Services team published some updates in the Azure Management Portal that include several improvements and new features. In this post you will find a quick summary of what has changed and what is new.

Content Protection tab

As part of the General Availability announcement of the Content Protection (AES and DRM) service, the following changes were applied in the Content Protection tab:

• The Preview tag next to the Content Protection tab was removed since the service is now in General Availability. This also means that you no longer need to sign up for the PlayReady license service via the Azure Preview features page; this feature is now active in all the Media Services accounts.
• The Branding Reporting table at the bottom is now optional; this means that the PlayReady license service is always enabled.

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Content tab

These are the improvements and new features that were added in the Content tab:

• The Encode command was renamed Process, since you can now select another media processor (not just the Azure Media Encoder).
• The Process dialog (formerly Encode) was refactored as follows:
  • The encoding configuration for Azure Media Encoder was reorganized into these categories to make it clearer for users:
    • Presets for Adaptive Streaming (dynamic packaging): produces multi-bitrate MP4 files ready for dynamic packaging
    • Presets for Progressive Download: produces a single MP4 file ready for progressive download
    • Legacy Presets for Adaptive Streaming: produces Smooth Streaming files ready for adaptive streaming
    • Other (common workflows).
  • As of the General Availability announcement of the Azure Media Indexer back in September 2014, you can now select the Azure Media Indexer processor to submit an indexing job. You can also enter the optional title and description metadata fields for the task configuration preset, and choose whether to copy the generated TTML caption file back to the input asset. For more information related to the Azure Media Indexer you can check this blog post.
• The Publish and Play commands now notify the user if the Media Services account does not have any streaming units when the content is dynamically encrypted (AES or PlayReady). Remember that the dynamic packaging and dynamic encryption features will only work in streaming endpoints that have at least one streaming unit.
• The Publish command now creates a SAS locator (for progressive download) instead of an Origin locator (for adaptive streaming) when the asset contains a single MP4 file. This is the case, for example, when you generate an asset by submitting a job using any of the H264 Broadband * encoding configuration presets.

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Channels and Programs tabs

With the AES encryption and PlayReady encryption announcements for the Live Streaming service back in  November/December 2014, the Azure Media Services team has added support to configure these features from the portal:

• The Start Streaming command in the Channels tab now includes three sub-commands:
  • Unencrypted: creates a channel program with default settings, publishes the associated asset with an Origin locator and starts the program.
  • AES Encrypted: same as Unencrypted command, but it also adds an asset delivery policy for AES dynamic encryption.
  • PlayReady Encrypted: same as Unencrypted command, but it also adds an asset delivery policy for PlayReady dynamic encryption.
• The Create a new program dialog now includes the Streaming Encryption Type setting:
• Unencrypted: creates a program with custom settings.
• AES Encrypted: same as Unencrypted command, but it also adds an asset delivery policy for AES dynamic encryption.
• PlayReady Encrypted: same as Unencrypted command, but it also adds an asset delivery policy for PlayReady dynamic encryption.
• The Programs table now has a new Encryption column specifying the streaming encryption type.

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Enjoy!

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