Video Breakthroughs

Microsoft launches Silverlight 5, keeping a promise for GPU decoding and equality for browser-based applications.

 

Given the added functionality and lengthy formalized support cycle that Microsoft announced at the time of Silverlight 5's launch - the company says it will support the tool until late 2021 - the same pundits might want to take a second look.

 

First, let's look at the functionality. Microsoft announced two key features of Silverlight 5: graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration for H.264 decoding and the ability for Silverlight to make a direct call to the kernel of the host operating system.

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There are basically two ways to sustain the extensive growth of video formats that you must, as a media distributor, serve to your different clients’ target devices : the most common answer is to choose the best in breed most-powerful encoders to prepare all the target formats during the content preparation time (see Panorama article N°1 on this topic), but you can adopt a different approach saying that you want to prepare your contents once and have the distribution part of the overall workflow take care of the repackaging and protection of the contents on the fly.

Server-side repackaging of the streams consists eventually in :
- choosing languages in audio and subtitle tracks available in the original mux (optional)
- transcoding/transrating the video content in different sizes/bitrates from a high quality video file (optional)
- applying a DRM compatible with the output format (optional)
- generating the manifest file corresponding to the target adaptive streaming technology (mandatory)
- remuxing and chunking the video data according to the output protocol requirements (mandatory)

Historically, repackaging was pushed as a quick solution for broadcasters to add iOS streams on top of existing Smooth or Flash streams. In a wider OTT/Adaptive Bitrate perspective, this alternative approach means : less files to manage in the main production workflow, less storage, less bandwidth to populate the origin servers, smaller time to contents’ online availability and easier support for new formats – shortly said, an agile path.

Potentially a risky one, but quite attractive…

Let's examine the available options on the market, to do it on your own platform or in the cloud !