Several months ago, a broadcaster asked me to provide a tool with a User Interface to upload, encode and manage assets with Azure Media Services. They wanted to easily, and without code, test our cloud encoding and streaming services before asking their developers to do the integration with their current system. The Azure Media Services management portal provides some of the features but has some limitations too (asset upload is limited, no possibility to call all the processors or to see detailed information on entities, not all API features are exposed, etc.).

For a few months, the tool has been trialed by several customers and based on their feedback it is time to release it widely.

So, I am pleased to announce the new Azure Media Services Explorer tool!

It’s a Windows Forms tool based on the Azure Media SDKs that can be used by non-developers to test media workflows, monitor activities on their Azure Media Services accounts, or do just about anything that the full API allows you to do today without writing a line of code.

You can find the installation package on http://aka.ms/amse.

We are also pleased to announce that the full source code for this tool is published to GitHub as well to help you better learn our APIs and integrate features into your own applications.

This sample tool will continue to evolve in the coming weeks and months. Check for updates! And please provide your feedback and suggestions to amse@microsoft.com.

Summary of features

Asset upload/download/management

Asset upload from files, folder, in batch mode, with a watch folder
Asset import from Azure Storage or from any http source
Asset download to local, and export to Azure Storage
Asset files management (upload or delete) within an existing asset
Duplicate/merge assets

Process assets

Encode with Azure Media Encoder (standard and custom presets, video stitching, audio or video overlay, etc)
Extract keywords and TTML caption files with Media Indexer
Encrypt with static packagers: PlayReady encryptor, MP4 to Smooth, Smooth to HLS, storage decryptor, multi MP4 validator
Generate thumbnails for your existing assets
Call any Media Processor generically
Manage jobs (progress, priority…)
List all available processors in your account

Live streaming

Enable live channels and programs (creation, start, stop, delete, reset)
Live preview playback, program playback

Publish assets

Dynamic encryption setup (AES, Common Encryption) and key/license delivery service
SAS and streaming locators creation/deletion
Playback assets with web based players (Silverlight, Flash, HTML5/Dash)
Manage streaming endpoints management (creation, deletion, settings)

Display and reporting

Display detailed information on assets (locators, protection), jobs (tasks), live channels, programs, streaming endpoints
Send email report for jobs and assets
Links to players and online documentation, and offline help file for Media Services

Note: you can select multiple assets, jobs, channels or programs for some features.

A first example with screen captures

Once installed, Explorer will ask for your Azure Media Services credentials. Create a media account if needed. Do not save your credentials if your PC/disk is not secured.

Then upload a file from your local disk with the File/Upload menu.

Once uploaded, select the asset and encode it with Azure Media Encoder.

A job is submitted and you can follow its progress.

You can choose the advanced mode for more encoding features (as described in this blog post from John Deutscher). The application ships the Azure Media Encoder presets as XML files. You can load one of them and edit it, or let the application change the XML data for you.