我是否需要将 Azure 媒体服务和播放器用于纯音频应用程序

Question

I'm looking to build an ASP.NET application that will allow users to upload audio files (only) and playback the media through the site. I was planning to use Azure Blob Storage to hold the media but do I need to use Azure Media Services and Player for upload and playback?

Is using Azure Media Services and Player over the top for audio as all the examples I can find concentrate on Video.

Any help or advice gratefully received.

Answer 1

You do not need to use Azure Media Services or the AMP (Azure Media Player) for upload and playback.

The key benefit (for me, at least) of using AMP

AMP can recognize which platform (iOS, Android, browser, etc) your user is on, and then scaffolding code to distribute the appropriate video file (ex: HLS on iOS, Smooth Streaming on MSFT platforms, DASH where it is supported). Now, the media player will handle all of that for you.

Uploading video

You can do this programmatically , either through a web app or compiled app that you write, or through Visual Studio's built-in upload tool. You'll need the Azure SDK installed to do this.

Uploading directly to blob storage

You do not need to upload your video to Azure Media Services directly. Instead, you can upload to a blob storage account (this is what I do), and then have your Azure Media Services account point to your blob storage.

The reason I do this is because I can more easily organize and manage my files in there, either by naming my blob of the folders within it.

Supported input formats for Azure Media Services

Various video, audio, and image file types can be uploaded to a Media Services account, with there being no restriction on the types or formats of files that you can upload using the Media Services SDK. However, the Azure Management portal restricts uploads to the formats that are supported by the Azure Media Encoder. Content encoded with the following video codecs may be imported into Media Services for processing by Azure Media Encoder:

• H.264 (Baseline, Main, and High Profiles)
• MPEG-1 MPEG-2 (Simple and Main Profile)
• MPEG-4 v2 (Simple Visual Profile and Advanced Simple Profile)
• VC-1 (Simple, Main, and Advanced Profiles)
• Windows Media Video (Simple, Main, and Advanced Profiles)
• DV (DVC, DVHD, DVSD, DVSL)

More information

I have more detailed information on all of this in a series of blog post tutorials on the subject. Let me know if there is anything more that I can do to clarify.