When I was working on the Expression Encoder Team we would get a number of questions about the possibility of hosting IIS Smooth Streaming files on Windows Azure blob storage.  The Azure Publishing Plugin that I wrote supported file upload for regular non streaming files but for ISMV content, the service would have needed to support IIS Media Services in order for it to play back successfully.

MP4 Explorer was a possible way of converting a Smooth Streaming file back to multiple file chunks which could be uploaded to Azure that would play just fine but this was a somewhat clunky (chunky?) process.

Steve Marx, on the Azure team, has gone one step better and written an upload tool which takes a ISMV file and chunks it on the fly as it is uploaded to Azure:

Blog post:

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/smooth-streaming-with-windows-azure-blobs-and-cdn

Code:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/smoothstreamingazure

Now, all Steve needs to do is update the publishing plugin code to use this and there would be an integrated experience inside of Expression Encoder

Even better, the IIS and Azure guys should make their stuff play together and just support Smooth Streaming directly in Blob storage.  Here’s hopin’