Encode an asset by using Media Encoder Standard in the Azure portal
Note
To complete this tutorial, you need an Azure account. For details, see Azure free trial.
One of the most common scenarios in working with Azure Media Services is delivering adaptive bitrate streaming to your clients. Media Services supports the following adaptive bitrate streaming technologies: Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming, and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH, also called MPEG-DASH). To prepare your videos for adaptive bitrate streaming, first encode your source video as multi-bitrate files. You can use Media Encoder Standard to encode your videos.
Media Services gives you dynamic packaging. With dynamic packaging, you can deliver your multi-bitrate MP4s in HLS, Smooth Streaming, and MPEG-DASH, without repackaging in these streaming formats. When you use dynamic packaging, you can store and pay for the files in single-storage format. Media Services builds and serves the appropriate response based on a client's request.
To take advantage of dynamic packaging, you must encode your source file into a set of multi-bitrate MP4 files. The encoding steps are demonstrated later in this article.
To learn how to scale media processing, see Scale media processing by using the Azure portal.
Encode in the Azure portal
To encode your content by using Media Encoder Standard:
In the Azure portal, select your Azure Media Services account.
Select Settings > Assets. Select the asset that you want to encode.
Select the Encode button.
In the Encode an asset pane, select the Media Encoder Standard processor and a preset. For information about presets, see Auto-generate a bitrate ladder and Task presets for Media Encoder Standard. It's important to choose the preset that will work best for your input video. For example, if you know your input video has a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels, you might choose the H264 Multiple Bitrate 1080p preset. If you have a low-resolution (640 × 360) video, you shouldn't use the H264 Multiple Bitrate 1080p preset.
To help you manage your resources, you can edit the name of the output asset and the name of the job.
Select Create.