Use your server to broadcast a stream published by Windows Media Encoder

This quick start demonstrates how to publish a broadcast from a computer running Windows Media Encoder through a Windows Media server, also known as push distribution. This technique is ideal for broadcasting company meetings or live presentations. For this task, you must have a separate computer running Windows Media Encoder that has a sound card or video capture card and the appropriate input devices. Also, be sure that the person operating the encoder has administrator rights and privileges for the Windows Media server and can connect to Windows Media Services.

1. Prepare Windows Media Services to receive content from the encoder by doing the following:
   • In Windows Media Services, in the console tree, click the server from which you want to stream.
   • In the details pane, click the Properties tab, and then in Category, click Control protocol.
   • Click WMS HTTP Server Control Protocol, and then click the Enable button. Windows Media Encoder uses the HTTP control protocol to send the encoded stream to the Windows Media server. For more information about the HTTP control protocol, see Using the HTTP protocol.
   • On the computer running Windows Media Encoder, set up a new encoding session to broadcast a live event.
2. Configure the encoder to create a new publishing point on your server by choosing the appropriate broadcast method.
3. You need to supply the following information to the encoder to enable it to create a publishing point successfully:
   • The name of your Windows Media server.
   • The name of the publishing point from which the content will be broadcast. The encoder will create this publishing point on your server if it does not already exist.
   • The name of an existing publishing point on the Windows Media server that has the settings that you want to use as a template for your new publishing point. The encoder administrator must have write and create permissions for the publishing point to use it as a template. If there is not an existing publishing point that you want to duplicate, the encoder will use the default publishing point configuration. For more information about setting publishing point permissions, see WMS Publishing Points ACL Authorization - general properties.

Once Windows Media Encoder creates a broadcast publishing point on the Windows Media server and begins streaming live content to it, clients can connect to the broadcast by using the publishing point URL or an announcement file,

For more information about testing your streaming content, see Testing a stream.

Notes

• Windows Media Services does not include a logging plug-in for encoder push scenarios. You can log encoder push broadcast data by creating an active script logging plug-in to use on your Windows Media server. For more information about creating a custom plug-in, see the Windows Media Services Software Development Kit (SDK), which can be downloaded from the Windows Media home page at the Microsoft Web site.
• For a detailed description of how to set up Windows Media Encoder, see Windows Media Encoder Help.

Related topics

• Quick starts
• Sourcing from an encoder