extract usage data from VOD media services

Regenbaum, Allan S. (CDC/OCOO/OCIO) (CTR) 21 Reputation points
2020-12-26T16:12:12.15+00:00

Planning to use media services to host and deliver VOD media. I will provide URLS to consumers of video for each asset. I dont control what player or client the video consumers would use. What AZURE services would I use to gather end user data. Typically i need the referer data. I need to know where the video request comes from. IP, GEO or anything else that allows me to know who/how that video was requested. What am i missing here ... Help appreciated in understanding the process.

Azure Media Services
Azure Media Services
A group of Azure services that includes encoding, format conversion, on-demand streaming, content protection, and live streaming services.
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  1. SnehaAgrawal-MSFT 21,506 Reputation points
    2020-12-29T18:25:04.64+00:00

    Thanks for reply! From a streaming endpoint perspective the only logging that we have available to you is the telemetry.

    See the docs at https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/azure/media-services/previous/media-services-telemetry-overview.

    However, we do not include IP addresses in this log, so that would not be useful here.

    Also, to understand better, you are saying that you are sharing a video URL to be embedded into social media sites. That’s fine if you are using a progressive download MP4 link since those platforms support direct MP4 playback.

    However more typically if you are streaming content using HLS, MPEG-DASH, and Smooth Streaming through the Media Services streaming endpoint. These are standard streaming formats, but typically require a player of some sort and you usually don’t use the streaming URL directly in your browser or share the streaming URL. Instead typically you’d share a player link as well.

    For example, if I wanted to send you the link to the streaming video at https://amssamples.streaming.mediaservices.windows.net/69fbaeba-8e92-4740-aedc-ce09ae945073/AzurePromo.ism/manifest
    I wouldn’t send that URL itself, but rather a player link like https://ampdemo.azureedge.net/url=%2F%2Famssamples.streaming.mediaservices.windows.net%2F69fbaeba-8e92-4740-aedc-ce09ae945073%2FAzurePromo.ism%2Fmanifest.

    You may try building a page similar to our AMP Demo page where you can pass URLs to it and manage your own playback as well as IP address logging for the webpage itself.

    Hope this helps.

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  1. SnehaAgrawal-MSFT 21,506 Reputation points
    2020-12-28T11:44:39.193+00:00

    Thanks for asking question! If you want to implement Video-on-Demand (VoD) content delivery application using Azure Media Services. Steps for this is as below:

    1. Start streaming endpoint (using the Azure portal).
    2. Connect to the Media Services account with REST API.
    3. Create a new asset and upload a video file with REST API.
    4. Encode the source file into a set of adaptive bitrate MP4 files with REST API.
    5. Publish the asset and get streaming and progressive download URLs with REST API.
    6. Play your content.

    To elaborate on 3rd step: After creating asset; If I have understood right you want to receive the actual upload URL, If so you need to create a SAS Locator.

    Locators define the start time and type of connection endpoint for clients that want to access Files in an Asset. You can create multiple Locator entities for a given AccessPolicy and Asset pair to handle different client requests and needs.

    You may refer to below doc links might be helpful:
    https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/azure/media-services/previous/media-services-rest-get-started
    https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/rest/api/media/operations/locator

    Please let us know if issue remains or you further query on this.

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