Web Playlists is an IIS Media Services extension that provides developers and hosters unprecedented control of how media content is delivered to users. Powerful customization features make it possible to monetize media delivery scenarios by inserting in-stream or pre-roll video ads and dynamically determine the content to be delivered based on the session history and configurable server-side rules.
Control playback of digital media files from IIS using playlists
The Web Playlists extension allows you to create server-controlled sequences of digital media content and prevent caching of content on end-user computers. The delivered playlists protect the direct URLs to your content and allow you to monetize the content through advertising. Web Playlists are created on IIS using a playlist format based on the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Interface Language (SMIL).
Monetize media scenarios with no-skip advertising content
Web Playlists allows you to control the order and playback of media content, and prevent end-users from skipping advertising content. In addition, you maintain control of whether or not content gets cached on end-user computers. The Web Playlists feature generates client-side playlists dynamically per request, allowing you to both personalize and control the media delivered to each user.
Extend existing applications and control the format of your playlists
By default, Web Playlists are simple to create and deliver. To personalize the experience, you can dynamically change the content of each client-side playlist through the implementation of custom providers and by leveraging existent ASP, PHP, and other Web applications. In addition, the output of the client-side playlist can be transformed to any XML format by using the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL).
Features
- Seamless integration into the IIS 7.x Manager interface
- Out-of-the box compatibility with the following media types: .asf, .avi,
.flv, .m4v, .mov, .mp3, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .wma and .wmv
- Configurable session settings:
- Session persistence
- Session life spans
- Number of possible concurrent connections
- Amount of content that needs to be rendered before a skip is allowed
- Ability to import client-side playlists (.asx) and convert to Web
Playlists (.isx)
- Nested playlists
- Configurable client-side caching control
- Ability to include protected media assets by impersonation
- Tokenized URLs in the media entries obfuscate the actual location of the
content
- Extensible architecture allows developers to implement custom logic in
.NET or COM
- Extensible Output Formats provides control over the response playlist
format by using XSLT
- Server side playlists stored on a fully-compliant subset of the SMIL
specification
- Ability to dynamically add entries as HTTPD references to a Web
application such as an ASP, ASPX or PHP page
- Better-together solution when combined with Bit Rate Throttling