Streaming Endpoints (Origin) in Azure Media Services

In Azure Media Services, a Streaming Endpoint represents a dynamic (just-in-time) packaging and origin service that can deliver your live and on-demand content directly to a client player app using one of the common streaming media protocols (HLS or DASH). The Streaming Endpoint also provides dynamic (just-in-time) encryption to industry-leading DRMs.

When you create a Media Services account, a default streaming endpoint is created for you in a stopped state. You can create more streaming endpoints can be created under the account (see Quotas and limits).

Make sure to also review the article Dynamic packaging.

Naming convention

The host name format of the streaming URL is: {servicename}-{accountname}-{regionname}.streaming.media.chinacloudapi.cn, where servicename = the streaming endpoint name or the live event name.

When using the default streaming endpoint, servicename is omitted so the URL is: {accountname}-{regionname}.streaming.chinacloudapi.cn.

Limitations

• The streaming endpoint name has a max value of 24 characters.
• The name should follow this regex pattern: ^[a-zA-Z0-9]+(-*[a-zA-Z0-9])*$.

Types

There are two Streaming Endpoint types: Standard (preview) and Premium. The type is defined by the number of scale units (scaleUnits) you allocate for the streaming endpoint.

The maximum streaming unit limit is usually 10.

The following table describes the Premium and Standard streaming endpoint types.

Comparing streaming types

¹ Standard streaming endpoints use a shared pool of resources.

Versions

Migration between types

Streaming endpoint properties

This section discusses some of the properties of streaming endpoints. For examples of how to create a new streaming endpoint and descriptions of all the properties, see Streaming endpoint.

• accessControl - Configures the following security settings for this streaming endpoint: Akamai Signature Header Authentication keys and IP addresses that are allowed to connect to this endpoint.

• crossSiteAccessPolicies - Specifies cross-site access policies for various clients. For more information, see Cross-domain policy file specification and Making a Service Available Across Domain Boundaries. The settings only apply to Smooth Streaming.

• customHostNames - Configures a streaming endpoint to accept traffic directed to a custom host name. This property is valid for Standard and Premium streaming endpoints.

  • The ownership of the domain name must be confirmed by Media Services. Media Services verifies the domain name ownership with the help of the CName record that contains the Media Services account ID as a component to be added to the domain in use. For example, if you use "sports.contoso.com" as a custom host name for the streaming endpoint, configure a record for <accountId>.contoso.com to point to one of Media Services verification host names. The verification host name is composed of verifydns.<mediaservices-dns-zone>.

    Following are the expected DNS zones to be used in the verify record for different Azure regions.

  • mediaservices.chinacloudapi.cn
  • verifydns.mediaservices.chinacloudapi.cn

  • For example, a CName record that maps "945a4c4e-28ea-45cd-8ccb-a519f6b700ad.contoso.com" to "verifydns.mediaservices.chinacloudapi.cn" proves that the Media Services ID "945a4c4e-28ea-45cd-8ccb-a519f6b700ad" has the ownership of the contoso.com domain, enabling any name under contoso.com to be used as a custom host name for a streaming endpoint under that account. To find the Media Service ID value, go to the Azure portal and select your Media Service account. The Account ID appears on the top right of the page.

  • If there's an attempt to set a custom host name without a proper verification of the CName record, the DNS response will fail and then be cached for some time. Once a proper record is in place, it might take some time until the cached response gets revalidated. Depending on the DNS provider for the custom domain, it takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to revalidate the record.

  • In addition to the CName that maps <accountId>.<parent domain> to verifydns.<mediaservices-dns-zone>, you must create another CName that maps the custom host name (like sports.contoso.com) to your Media Services Streaming Endpoint's host name (like amstest-cne21.streaming.media.chinacloudapi.cn).

  Note

  Streaming endpoints located in the same data center can't share the same custom host name.

  Presently, Media Services does not support TLS with custom domains.

• maxCacheAge - Overrides the default max-age HTTP cache control header set by the streaming endpoint on media fragments and on-demand manifests. The value is set in seconds.

• resourceState - Below is the description of the states of your streaming endpoint.

  • Stopped - the initial state of a Streaming Endpoint after creation.
  • Starting - Transitioning to the running state.
  • Running - Able to stream content to the clients.
  • Scaling - the scale units are being increased or decreased.
  • Stopping: Transitioning to the stopped state.
  • Deleting: Being deleted.

• scaleUnits - Provides a dedicated egress capacity that you can purchase in increments of 200 Mbps. If you need to move to a Premium type, adjust the value of scaleUnits.

Why use multiple streaming endpoints?

A single streaming endpoint can stream both live and on-demand videos and most customers use only one streaming endpoint. This section explains the scenarios that might need you to use multiple streaming endpoints.

• Each reserved unit allows for 200 Mbps of bandwidth. If you need more than 2,000 Mbps (2 Gbps) of bandwidth, use the second streaming endpoint and load balance that provides an additional bandwidth.

• Streaming mixed content - Live streaming and video on-demand. The access patterns for live and on-demand content are different. The live content tends to get a lot of demand for the same content all at once. The video on-demand content (for example, a long tail archive content) has low usage on the same content. Thus, caching works very well on the live content but not as well on the long tail content.

  Consider a scenario in which your customers are mainly watching live content but are only occasionally watching on-demand content and it is served from the same streaming endpoint. The low usage of on-demand content would occupy cache space that would be better saved for the live content. In this scenario, we would recommend serving the live content from one streaming endpoint and the long tail content from another streaming endpoint. This will improve the performance of the live event content.