Ok so after this introduction to Windows Media Services (WMS) let us move ahead and look at the steps to integrate SharePoint with WMS.
Once Windows Media Services is Installed open the Windows Media Services Manager.
In the WMS Manager click the tab called Announce (using this you can create a Video Stream)
The media stream that WMS creates uses mms protocol the link that it will generate can be put directly in Windows Media Player to play the video stream but you can not store this link in SharePoint because the Link List in SharePoint only takes http protocol so we will run the Unicast Announcement Wizard which will create asx file which supports http protocol.
Clicking on the "Run Unicast Announcement Wizard" will start the Unicast Announcement Wizard. Click on Next
On the "On-Demand Directory" window click the browse button and select a video that you want to stream then click on Next
On the Access the Content Screen click on Next
On the Save Announcement Option screen select the path where you want to save the announcement. I decided to save the asx file on an IIS web site so that i can get an hhtp link to that file. So i created a simple IIS website called Media Services and gave its physical path as "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\Media" and saved the asx file on the same path
On the Edit Announcement Metadata page you add metadata to the asx file and then click Next
On the Complete Announcement Wizard Page click Finish.
Till now we have a Video Stream created but now we need a Video Player web part to play this stream on the SharePoint site.
So the next step is to create Media Player Web part. I created a simple webpart which embeds the Windows Media Player on the SharePoint page and takes the source parameter of the Video dynamically from the query string. The following is the code for the Media Player Web Part.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI;
namespace MediaPlayerWebPart
{
public class MediaPlayer : WebPart
{
private string videoPath = string.Empty;
[WebBrowsable(true), Personalizable(true), WebDisplayName("Video Path")]
public string VideoPath
{
get
{
return ((this.videoPath == null) ? string.Empty : this.videoPath);
}
set
{
this.videoPath = value;
}
}
private string width = "192";
[WebBrowsable(true), Personalizable(true), WebDisplayName("Width")]
public string Width
{
get
{
return ((this.width == null) ? string.Empty : this.width);
}
set
{
this.width = value;
}
}
private string height = "190";
[WebBrowsable(true), Personalizable(true), WebDisplayName("Height")]
public string Height
{
get
{
return ((this.height == null) ? string.Empty : this.height);
}
set
{
this.height = value;
}
}
protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
//if(Page.Request.QueryString["VideoPath"] != null || Page.Request.QueryString["VideoPath"] != string.Empty)
if (Page.Request.QueryString["VideoPath"] != null)
{
videoPath = Page.Request.QueryString["VideoPath"].ToString();
}
this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<body><OBJECT ID=\"MediaPlayer\" WIDTH=\"" + width + "\" HEIGHT=\"" + height + "\" CLASSID=\"CLSID:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95\"STANDBY=\"Loading Windows Media Player components...\" TYPE=\"application/x-oleobject\"><PARAM NAME=\"FileName\" VALUE=\"" + videoPath + "\"><PARAM name=\"autostart\" VALUE=\"true\"> <PARAM name=\"ShowControls\" VALUE=\"true\"><param name=\"ShowStatusBar\" value=\"false\"><PARAM name=\"ShowDisplay\" VALUE=\"false\"><EMBED TYPE=\"application/x-mplayer2\" SRC=\"" + videoPath + "\" NAME=\"MediaPlayer\"WIDTH=\"192\" HEIGHT=\"190\" ShowControls=\"1\" ShowStatusBar=\"0\" ShowDisplay=\"0\" autostart=\"0\"> </EMBED> </OBJECT> </body>");
}
Next.. create a Links List on a SharePoint site and add the link to the asx file that we just created.
Once all this is done add the Media Player Web Part and a List View Web Part showing the list of videos on a SharePoint Web Part Page. For this PoC I added a DataView web part of this Links list which displayed the Name of the Video as a hyperlink to the same page with the url of the Video as the query string so that the Media Player Web Part picks up the source of the Video from the Query string and plays the Video.
So here it is Video Streaming on SharePoint!!!
Now you can play videos from your Streaming Server directly on SharePoint.
