Memory and google

I recently started a project where I had to stream a live audio broadcast for a church.  I have done live audio streaming in the past (few years back).  I was in the middle of setting up the Windows Media Server and could not remember how to get the system to take a “push” broadcast.  Push is the method where an encoder (computer with the source audio or video) sends it’s encoded product to the server and the server then rebroadcasts (streams) that content.

Knowing that this can be done and I have done it before, I began to setup the server.  What was interesting is that I could not remember how I did it before.  There was one trick setting (not really documented) that I could not remember.   So I did as most do, I googled for “push distribution” and “windows media server”.  What I found was many / many documents and articles on how to encode to a windows media server, but not how to setup the server.  I then remembered that the same thing happened a few years back when I was wrestlingwith the same issue.  In the end, a freak search on google pulled up that little trick.

FYI : if you are interested, one of the details when setting up a publishing point for live streams is the Encoder URL (http://something) is pre-populated.   To allow for push distribution you have to just put something in that area during the wizard, then go into the properties and change that to “push:*”.  Like I said, this is not really documented anywhere and if you look at the instructions it only tells you to setup the server (no steps) and start encoding.  For those interested I will post the steps on how to stream live audio / and video using Windows Media server soon.  And I will detail out how to do PUSH distribution.