I have a project I am currently working on to convert my old VHSC tapes into digital format.  I have some VHSC cassettes from 1998 that I am trying to convert over.  I know they have + / - 10 year life span and the oldest tape is going on 13 years (Not cool).  Instead of making this a mundane chore, I plan to use the latest in video streaming to convert these videos to digital format and might look at the blog storage on windows azure to store some of the videos (i.e. I might be able to pull together 1 -  2 hours of video over the past 13 years and create a playlist for family behind a password protected site - probably my blog).  Anyway, Time to get cranking.

I have an analog to digital converter so I now have some data to test in digital format (wmv).  In order to get it web ready, I need to set up my local environment to test out smooth streaming.  I don't want to do this on my production box (i.e. My office computer upstairs or my wife's business computer downstairs).  I posted a blog earlier today demonstrating how to set up a test OS for just this kind of scenario.  You can get to the tutorial by clicking the skydrive image below.

 1st step is to set up IIS7 Media Services.  You will need to go online and get the IIS Media Services 3.0.  I am downloading the 64 bit version.

2nd step is to get is installed and configured.

3rd step is to verify IIS Media Services is available.

 Scroll to the bottom and verify Smooth Streaming Icon exists (see below).

You probably want some sample data to play with.  You can download the Big Bunny Sample data by clicking the image below or clicking the following link (Big Bunny Sample Data).

I downloaded the sample to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BigBuckSampleData.  The next step was to open IIS7 and create an applicaiton out of it. 

From IIS7, Right click on your sample data folder and select Convert to Application.  Next, select OK to accept the defaults.

Now we are ready to see what this looks like.  Open a browser and type http://localhost/BigBuckSampleData/default.html.  You will see the following screen pop up.  Click the Start Playing button.

To get more inormation about IIS7 Smooth Streaming, there is a great technical overview document online.  You can download it here. 

The technical overview contains some interesting information.  It talks about Traditional Streaming vs. Adaptive Streaming.  Here are two images from the document that demonstrate how they differ:

Good luck!

Reference Section: