Managing, transforming and delivering Cloud content using Workflows.
Can we do all that for Media Services?
Absolutely. Using Azure Media Services,
and I'm going to tell you all about it coming up now.
Hello, everybody.
My name is Adam Gordon, an edutainer here at ITProTV,
back with another episode in our ongoing conversation around ‘What Is Azure?’,
where we look at different Services, Features and Capabilities
on the Microsoft Azure platform,
and we use three specific questions to frame our conversation,
really help you to understand the ideas behind them
so you can decide whether or not they make sense for you.
We talk about what the service is,
we talk about why it may be important,
why, ultimately, it makes sense for you and your organization
to consider using it,
and of course, how you can deploy it and put it to work for you.
Let's begin by jumping in and talking about
what is the Azure Media Service.
When we think about Azure Media Services,
we really have to step back.
We have to consider ourselves, myself, you, any of us,
how we consume media today.
Most of us probably use streaming media more often than not,
and probably have for a long time.
You're watching me right now over a streaming media platform.
You may be watching me on YouTube,
you certainly may be familiar with ITProTV,
and may actually use us as a training provider.
And you may watch me and my fellow edutainers helping you
to understand technology all the time.
ITProTV is also a media streaming provider.
And as a result of those kinds of interactions,
most of us today are very familiar with what media streaming is.
But when we think about what Azure Media Services are,
we have to step back and realize
that it's not just about streaming one or two videos to people
that may or may not be present at a meeting
and have to watch them on replay,
but we're talking about enterprise global spanning scale
for media streaming distribution,
and the ability not only to scale that content,
but the ability to deliver that content to various customers
and endpoints of all sorts of types.
We have Apple, we have Android,
we have Google and of course, Mozilla Firefox, not to mention,
of course, Microsoft.
Any kind of technology platform
that we decide to consume from as a customer
can receive these media service elements
and ultimately, can help our end users,
our customers become better informed, and use our content,
and hopefully, as a result,
help our company to survive and thrive.
So the what is global capabilities to scale
and ultimately, to stream media to anywhere on the planet
and to any kind of customer using any kind of platform.
When we think about the why,
we want to think about not just customer flexibility,
and certainly choice, but we want to think about security,
we want to think about best of breed technology,
we want to think about cutting edge artificial intelligence,
machine learning, and the ability to recognize content
and make it available in a variety of different ways.
Hypothetically, let's just say that I created some sort of video,
whatever that content is.
And maybe that content represent it
with our content element right over here
is going to be a five-minute video, a streaming video of me
presenting this exact content to you right now.
Now, during this content, I'm using elements on the lightboard,
I'm saying a variety of things to you,
and things are popping up on the screen.
Like for instance,
those three questions we started the episode with,
'What is it?', 'Why is it important?' and, 'How do you use it?'
The artificial intelligence and the machine learning algorithms,
the capabilities that are available to us
in Azure Media Services allow deep introspection,
deep analysis of that data,
and allow us to take that information
and make it available to customers
in all sorts of new and innovative ways.
We can have facial recognition.
You could be searching for
and saying I want to find anything that Adam is in.
I want to find this face, match it,
and I want to see all that video content.
And Azure Media Services can do that.
I want to be able to recognize written text.
Let's say that I wrote out as I did the word customers right here,
and I want to be able to say that anytime
that word customers appeared, I want to pull that information,
and I want to be able to make it available
and create a playlist, we can do that.
Maybe I want to stream that content to various endpoints.
I want to have a variety of content,
but I want to do so securely using DRM,
data rights management protection,
so that way, my content, my intellectual property,
your business's bread and butter is going to be protected
using state of the art best of breed security
so that as we stream it out
and make it available to our customers
across all these different platforms,
we can reliably understand that they'll access this content,
but they'll do so in a secure way,
getting access to content they've paid for,
we've licensed and where we want them to see for free,
but to do so in secure ways.
So as we think about the 'Why?',
I want to think about all these different elements,
how they come together.
And by the way, it's not just our video content
that we can stream, but it is all sorts of assets.
Maybe it is meetings that we record,
maybe it's the PowerPoint slide decks that go with them,
maybe it's the transcripts of that,
maybe it's any and all of those things put together
sent to any of those endpoints
on any of these platforms securely,
using, as I said, best of breed encryption,
and data rights management technology to embed
and ultimately protect our intellectual property.
And while we're at it,
we're going to use multifactor authentication
to ensure that customers are able to get that content,
but to keep the people that don't belong, seeing it,
if they need to pay for it out
and to ensure that only authorized users are using the platform.
Any and all of this is available to us in Azure Media Services.
We've answered the ‘What?’,
we've talked about the ‘Why?’,
most importantly, we still have the ‘How?’ left to go.
And in order to show you how all this comes together,
how easy it is to be able to create the initial onboarding
for the Azure Media Services, create the media account,
and get set up, we're going to take a look at the portal,
and I'm going to show you how to do this coming up right now.
Hello, everybody.
We're in the ‘How?’ portion looking at our Azure Portal
about ready to jump in
and see how we create our Azure Media Services account.
I'm going to start by searching for the Media Services
in the All Services area.
We're in the marketplace,
we can find any sorts of services that we want here.
We can see a variety of them
already listed over there under Featured.
Once we see that link, we'll click on it.
We'll be taken to the Media Services area,
where I've already taken the liberty
of creating a Media Services account for us to use.
It take several minutes to stand up the account
and get it working.
I'll quickly run you through the Wizard,
showing you how we would add one.
Then we're going to jump in
and actually spend a couple minutes looking under the hood
at the Features and Capabilities
that Media Services account gives us.
All the elements that we talked about at the lightboard
as we examine the answers
to the “Why?’ and the “What?’ questions.
All right. So let's get started,
we're going to go ahead and type in the word Media here.
We'll go ahead and we'll search.
And when you see we do that,
I'll just zoom in so you can see what that brings up.
We see Media Services there, the only element.
So we'll go ahead, we'll click on that.
We do see our Media Services information here.
We see our courtney1 account,
that's the account we're going to use in just a couple minutes.
I'm going to click on that Add button,
because normally there would be nothing here,
we'd have to start by creating our own accounts.
Let's click Add.
I have a very simple Wizard we're going to follow through here.
What we get is the ability to scroll down so we could see that.
We get the ability here to start with Project Details
specifying our Subscription information, a Resource Group.
You want to put all of the elements associated
with the Storage account,
for instance, the endpoint for streaming
as well as the actual Media Services count.
All three of those are going to be created
inside this resource group and associated together.
We can use an existing one by pulling down
on the right-hand side there or use the link to create new.
Same thing with the Media Services Account Details
you'll see right over there, as we go through.
We do have to provide Media Services Account Name.
It must be unique.
We do have to provide a Location, what geography
and data center do we want to use this service through,
anywhere in the world where Azure Services are available.
And then Storage Account,
that's going to be the backing element,
that's going to allow us to upload all of our content,
all of our assets, as we talked about at the lightboard
and make them available
so we can stage them and stream them out.
Think of those as your mp3 files, your meeting recordings,
your PowerPoint slide decks,
all that stuff you want to make available.
All that has to be stored somewhere
and all that's going to go into one or more Storage accounts.
Again, either use existing by pulling down
or use the link there when it becomes available
and create a new Storage account.
And then finally down at the bottom of the page here,
let's just scroll down so you could see that.
We do have an option to opt-in
and either Enable the Classic APIs.
If we do that, we get what are known as the classic V2, version two APIs.
Space functionality, very important,
but Advanced Security and Features
are going to become unavailable if we check that box off.
Specifically, one of the most important,
the Managed Identity Capability
we see right below on Advanced Settings.
And that Managed Identity is going to be System-managed for us
meaning it is going to be created,
it being the account that will be created
in the Azure Active Directory.
It'll be stored there, managed by Azure,
and made available to provide Services and Capabilities
as we look to link the Media Services account
and the streaming capabilities it provides to lots of other things,
like web applications and/or services and APIs
that we want to consume, turn around
and make available through the platform.
So we're going to make our choices here.
And then finally, once we've done all that
right at the very bottom here,
we do need to just see that we can opt-in
and indeed we do have to check off that box
since I have all the rights to use the content and/or file.
The content is the asset that we're going to upload.
So all those meeting recordings, all the mp3s, the videos,
the music, the PowerPoints, etc, all that stuff.
And that we're going to be able to say to Microsoft
on the owner system,
'It's our stuff, we have the right to make it available
and we're doing so legally.'
So we're opting-in there.
We click Review and Create, we get a validation screen.
Once we're validated, we click Go Ahead.
It takes 2-3 minutes to stand up the account
and get it all set and ready to go.
Let's assume we've done all that
because we're not going to wait for that to happen.
I'm going to go over here to Resource Groups
and I'm going to come down here,
just highlight it as we zoom in.
I've already got my Resource Group, the Media Resource Group,
where I've created the Media Services account,
the Backing Storage account and the Streaming Endpoint.
Three objects that are created
as part of the outcome of that Wizard and that process.
We'll click through and we do see right over here,
that all of them are available.
And we can see they're in the East US,
where they would have been by default,
if we ran through the Wizard.
We're going to spend a couple of minutes now
examining what's actually in that Media Services account,
what's in that courtney1 account that we want to see.
But the Storage account, as I called out and suggested,
and our Streaming Endpoint are available there.
And they will be there and made available for us
as part of the outcome of the process we just walked through.
Let's click on that Media Services account.
We'll see that we bring it up.
And aside from the Overview area,
and just the basic information about it,
the fact that it is Active,
and the fact that it is available to us
in our Subscription location, etc.,
we do have then the ability to do Access Control,
to look at Log in.
But we're much more interested in the areas below there.
The areas that have to do with Settings,
as well as the ability...
we'll just zoom in so you could see that,
deal with Media Services right below.
We could set up Encryption,
talk about the new Advanced Security and Capabilities
using AES-based encryption, best of breed,
as well as remember DRM, digital rights management
to protect our intellectual property.
Those elements are available to us here, under Settings.
Our Storage account is there, one or more,
depending on what we're doing,
where we can actually see our Content
and our Assets and interact with them.
So all those elements are brought together here.
And then below, we see our Media Services.
Let's just bring that front and center.
Let's make sure we can see that nicely in the screen
as we zoom in.
We have API Access.
That's where we can add and interact with multiple APIs
bringing in different Services and Capabilities
from all different areas of the Azure platform.
We have our Assets area.
That's where we can actually upload and provide those assets,
those streaming media files, those PowerPoint files, etc.,
and then ultimately make them available.
It's a simple upload area where we click on Upload,
we select the file type
and ultimately, the place it's from that we add it in.
Once up in our Storage account, we're then able to use it.
We have our Content Policies.
We have our Transforms and Jobs.
We have the ability to set up Live Streaming,
as well as look at and monitor
and interact with Streaming Endpoints.
And then all of these features
are part of the Media Services solution.
All of these, by the way,
are things that will have to be configured.
There is some complexity associated with doing this,
but rest assured,
I can make that complexity relatively straightforward,
by walking through and understanding how to use all of this.
I do a job on all that and much more for you
around all this kind of content over at ITProTV.
You can watch all the Azure content I have there
as one of the edutainers.
People that I work with, all the other edutainers on our team
are also going to provide a lot of that content for you
where we break down these complex services
and spend the time walking through them end-to-end for you,
to show you how to implement them.
We just did a quick high-level flyby here,
we go a lot more in depth.
So I always encourage you,
as I do at the end of every one of our episodes,
to take a walk with me,
take it on and over at ITProTV, check us out
and if you find value in what we're doing, Subscribe.
You can use our content, we could spend more time together
and I could show you the really cool things you can do
with Azure top to bottom.
I'm going to wish you Happy Azuring
until I come back with another episode
and until then, I'll see you soon.