Azure Blob Storage or Media service for storing short Mobile recorded Videos

Question

Background information:

Right now I'm storing jpeg images in azure blob storage and it works fine. Now, however I'd like to store videos that have been recorded from iOS or Android devices and send them to either an azure blob storage or media service thru an asp.net web api. I tried uploading a mp4 to the blob storage and then I tried to use it in my code like this:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="video.mp4"></iframe>

The video plays fine in iOS devices, unfortunately it's not playing at all in Android though.

BUT if I upload the same mp4 video to azure media service the video works in Android aswell for some reason i unaware of.

Question: Given my background information, which one should i choose, blob storage or media services? Also, will there be any price differences depending on which one i choose given my scenario, at this moment I'd like to choose media services simply because the video actually worked in both iOS & Android without any configuration while from blob storage it didn't.

Any help or input about this highly appreciated, Thanks!

Answer 1

If you want to upload / access blob storage directly from IOS or Android clients you can also do this using our mobile client libraries. See the following two getting started guides for more information:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2015/09/29/how-to-use-blob-storage-from-ios.aspx
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-java-how-to-use-blob-storage/

Answer 2

Give your video is very short (I guess less than a minute), I think using progressive download is a better solution. You can store media file in blob storage and get a SAS locator (for each blob you can only have to up to 5 locator) to playback the content.