How Smoothflow Works; Figure 4 Smoothflow™ Deployment Overview - Juniper MEDIA FLOW CONTROLLER 2.0.4 - ADMINISTRATOR S GUIDE AND CLI Administrator's Manual

Media Flow Controller Overview
Client
players
Client
players
Client
players
Figure 4 SmoothFlow™ Deployment Overview

How SmoothFlow Works

SmoothFlow is based on a dual channel approach where one channel is used for video
delivery, and the other for control purposes to signal to Media Flow Controller adaptation
points for responding to bandwidth fluctuations. SmoothFlow technology is delivered via
progressive download over HTTP, providing the additional benefit that the consumer does not
need to download a custom player. As shown in
1. Content providers decide how many bit-rate profiles (differently encoded versions) of any
one video they want to create. Each set of encoded bit-rate profiles must include a
metadata file describing how many bit-rate profiles a video has and where they are stored;
this file may be created by the provider, or auto-created, depending on the encoding
procedure used. Together, the bit-rate profiles and the description file are the "asset." After
the assets are created, they are pre-staged to an origin server, typically via FTP.
2. Next the publisher or encoder sends a properly configured Media Flow Controller a
SmoothFlow processing request for the asset. This may be done with a script, depending
on the encoding procedure used.
3. SmoothFlow reads the data file given in the processing request, obtains the video files,
and processes them for delivery; this includes chunking the different bit-rate profiles,
creating the internal metadata file for Media Flow Controller, and queuing the assets on
the origin server.
4. Assets are delivered to the edge either upon cache miss or via a SmoothFlow virtual
player. As the assets are delivered to the client players over the delivery channel,
feedback hints to SmoothFlow are sent over the control channel telling Media Flow
Controller when to switch to a different bit-rate profile.
52 Media Flow Controller SmoothFlow
Media Flow Controller Edge
Seattle
Media Flow Controller Edge
Chicago
Media Flow Controller Edge
Boston
Media Flow Controller Administrator's Guide
2
SmoothFlow
processing
request
Media Flow Controller
4
Internet
Figure 4:
Copyright © 2010, Juniper Networks, Inc.
Publishing system
Multi bit-rate
videos
1 FTP push
Origin library
NFS or HTTP
3
Origin server with
SmoothFlow processing