Download IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit Beta 1

Concomitantly with the general availability of IIS Media Services 3.0, Microsoft has also started offering for download a testing version of IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0. Live on the Microsoft Download Center since October 12th, 2009. Beta 1 of IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit is designed to make it easy for developers to take advantage of on-demand and Live Smooth Streaming. “This is intended to aid the development of rich Smooth Streaming players and experiences. This Kit allows you to build players for both On Demand and Live playback with full DVR capabilities, Live Ad Insertion, Multiple Camera Angles and many more such rich functionalities,” revealed Vishal Sood, a program manager in the IIS team.

There are no less than three components in the IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, Sood revealed. Developers will be able to leverage the Smooth Streaming Player SDK, the Push Encoder and a sample of a Smooth Streaming Player.

“Smooth Streaming Player SDK – This enables developers and designers to build rich Smooth Streaming player experiences. We are providing a .net (Silverlight) based SDK with full XAML support. The core part of this infrastructure is Smooth Streaming Media Element that is similar to Silverlight Media Element if you are already familiar with Silverlight development platform,” Sood indicated.

In order to help devs test IIS Media Services 3.0, the Redmond company is providing a sample Smooth Streaming Player. Developed on Smooth Streaming Player SDK, the app is set up to support various testing scenarios of the latest iteration of IIS Media Services. Also for testing, the Push Encoder can simulate live streams, Sood underlined.

“The Smooth Streaming Media Element (SSME) APIs provide an easy interface for developers and designers to create rich Smooth Streaming experiences using the Silverlight platform. These APIs provide support for simple operations like Play, Pause and Stop and also more complex ones like scheduling Ads, selecting and tracking bit-rates for Smooth Streaming playback and many more,” Sood stated.

IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit 1.0 Beta 1 is available for download here.