Getting Started With Azure Media Services

Introduction

We are in a world where the pandemic is at its peak forcing white-collar jobs to work from home and there is a surge in the number of online meetings. There is a bigger challenge to host these meetings and stream for a larger audience hassle-free with the best Audio/Video quality irrespective of the user’s internet speed.

What is Azure media service?

Microsoft has introduced a feature where users can create live events and stream to audiences with Azure Managing latency and different streaming factors, making streaming a buttery smooth experience.

It offers to stream a static audio/video file in different encoding formats (480,720,1080p etc.) and live streaming with the help of input URL and output streamer using RTMP (Real-time messaging) protocol. We will see how we can set up basic Live streaming step by step in this article.

Prerequisites

Azure account setup (Create a Free trial) in portal.azure.com.
Some knowledge of basic cloud concepts.
OBS studio installed (google for it).
VLC media player for this Demo.

Let's Jump to Action,

Step 1

Getting Started With Azure Media Services - Live Streaming

Step 2

Search for media services and press enter and click on create button.

Step 3

Enter the required information as shown below. Create a Storage account and resource group if not available beforehand and hit on create and Review. Do not forget to enable the checkbox.

Once Created click on Go to Resource option.

Step 4

We can see our familiar left window for service along with a tab for media services where we can see Assets, API access, Live streaming, and some other options. Let select Live streaming.

Step 5

Click on Add Live event and fill in the required information as below

Please note we have selected RTMP as protocol. Click on Review and create and finally create. The Advanced Tab is left to reader research.

Once created click on the newly created event. Initially, it's in a stopped state.

Step 6

Click on Start and your live event will be started. Please note that once started Azure will start billing for that event.

Step 7

Note down the input URL which we need for live streaming via third-party encoders like OBS studio.

Step 8

Click on Configure outputs and fill in the information as shown below

Click on Add streaming locator and input the following as shown below and click on create.

Step 9

Now let's get into real action, open the installed OBS studio and click on Settings

Step 10

Now in the Stream section, select service as custom, and in the URL field enter the URL copied in Step 7 and key as default(for demo default is key) and click okay.

Step 11

Click on start streaming and you are ready to witness the live stream. Refresh the player in the azure portal and we can see the live video.

Conclusion

With the Azure media services, it is very much possible to live stream the video in different encoding formats. We can also enable AI to analyze the sentiments and, we can capture live transcripts.