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.

I have seen by searching the internet that a trick can be done by hooking the manifestready event and removing the lowest bitrates and then adding them back after some time. It make sense but I have seen no sample code of doing that.

I got the player code from expression encoder 4 and had a look but found nowhere where to do the change.

Does someone have more info on improving startup for smooth streaming?

Thank you very much

Answer 1

Hello I posted the question to the Media Platform Player forum and got an answer that works.

The discussion is here: http://smf.codeplex.com/discussions/271042

Here is the code I use:

public MainPage() {
        InitializeComponent();
        player.MediaPluginRegistered += new EventHandler<CustomEventArgs<IMediaPlugin>>(player_MediaPluginRegistered);
        player.PlayStateChanged += new EventHandler<CustomEventArgs<MediaPluginState>>(Player_PlayStateChanged);
    }
private IAdaptiveMediaPlugin _adaptivePlugin = null;
private bool isStartupHeuristicsActive = false;

void player_MediaPluginRegistered(object sender, CustomEventArgs<IMediaPlugin> e) {
    var adaptivePlugin = e.Value as IAdaptiveMediaPlugin;
    if (adaptivePlugin == null) return; 
    if (_adaptivePlugin == null) _adaptivePlugin = adaptivePlugin;
    _adaptivePlugin.ManifestReady +=new Action<IAdaptiveMediaPlugin>(_adaptivePlugin_ManifestReady);
}

void  _adaptivePlugin_ManifestReady(IAdaptiveMediaPlugin obj)
{
    if (_adaptivePlugin != null)
    {
        var videoStream = _adaptivePlugin.CurrentSegment.SelectedStreams.Where(i => i.Type == StreamType.Video).FirstOrDefault();

        if (videoStream != null)
        {
            var averageBitrate = videoStream.AvailableTracks.Average(t => t.Bitrate);

            var track = videoStream.AvailableTracks.FirstOrDefault(t => t.Bitrate >= averageBitrate);
            if (track != null)
            {
                isStartupHeuristicsActive = true;
                videoStream.SetSelectedTracks(new[] { track });
            }
        }
    }
}

private void Player_PlayStateChanged(object sender, CustomEventArgs<MediaPluginState> e)
{
    if (isStartupHeuristicsActive && e.Value == MediaPluginState.Playing)
    {
        isStartupHeuristicsActive = false;
        if (_adaptivePlugin != null)
        {
            var videoStream = _adaptivePlugin.CurrentSegment.SelectedStreams.Where(i => i.Type == StreamType.Video).FirstOrDefault();
            if (videoStream != null)
            {
                videoStream.SetSelectedTracks(videoStream.AvailableTracks);
            }
        }
    }
}

Thank you