Multiplexing several ingested audio streams and one video stream with Azure Media Services

Question

We are looking into developing a web application that streams video from one source and audio from several locations. In the future, we may consider streaming video from multiple locations also.

The content will be delivered to multiple clients and must be thus packaged as one output stream. From what we could find on Media Services docs, there is no builtin way to multiplex the incoming streams into one output stream to be delivered to users.

How could one multiplex several AV sources with Azure Media Services. Please note that "locations" was used deliberately to signify that the AV sources will be in different physical locations and as such, the multiplexing cannot be done locally on one computer.

Answer 1

Azure Media Services supports Adobe RTMP and Microsoft Smooth (fMP4) ingest. The Microsoft Smooth protocol will allow you to send independent streams containing video or audio, that are synchronized by timestamp. RTMP will support multiple audio tracks, but I don't believe multiple video tracks are supported.

When you create a Channel for Smooth (fMP4) ingest you will have access to an ingest end point which you can send media to from multiple end points, for example, http://domain/ingest.isml/Streams(video_camera_angle1) , .../Streams(video_camera_angle2), .../Streams(audio_en), .../Streams(audio_sp), .../Streams(audio_fr).

Azure Media Services supports 4 egress protocols: Apple HLS, Adobe HDS, Microsoft Smooth, and MPEG-DASH. All of them support multiple audio tracks. Today, I believe only Microsoft Smooth and Apple HLS support multiple video tracks.