Review: Grown Up Microsoft Stream Is Ready for Business
When we last looked at Microsoft Stream in August 2016, it was a preview version, so its commercial utility and competitiveness were difficult to assess. Since then, Microsoft has primarily focused on making Stream 对于那些员工通信和互动主要基于Office 365各种应用程序的公司来说，这是理想的企业视频服务. Although underfeatured and clumsy at times, Stream largely excels in this role.
Stream is included in most Office 365 plans for organizations. We won’t explore those options here, but if you’re interested in Stream, 在做出购买决定之前，你显然应该确定任何成本和相关限制.
Organization and Users
In terms of authentication, Office 365 users and groups are managed with Azure Active Directory, Microsoft’s cloud-based user identity and authentication service. 一些组织将建立混合解决方案，这些解决方案也连接到现有的本地身份存储(如Active Directory). If you’re currently using either of these services, deploying Stream among your users should be straightforward.
在Stream中有两种主要的组织结构:通道和组. 组实际上是Office 365组，您可以在其他Office 365应用程序中使用它来组织和控制对内容的访问. In contrast, channels are more of an organization method, which can be companywide or devoted to a single group. Channels appear on each user’s homepage along with trending videos (Figure 1). When a channel is companywide, 所有具有上传权限的用户都可以提交视频，无需审查和批准流程. Administrators control who can upload videos, but it’s binary; either on or off, again with no approval. 个人用户可以通过通道在自己的主页上展示这些通道，如图1所示.
Figure 1. The home portal within Stream
Groups offer more control over access and uploading (Figure 2). They can be public or private and get their own email alias. In both cases, 您可以允许所有组成员上传视频，也可以将内容创建限制为列出的用户，如图2所示. 这允许多种类型的组进行公共和私人访问和贡献.
Figure 2. Creating a group
For example, a public group that disseminates important policies (human resources) might have only a few users who can add content; a public group for general consumption (favorite cat videos) might allow all users to add content. 这些相同的动态可以应用于私有组:限制使用自顶向下策略(安全标准)的组的内容贡献，同时允许所有组成员上传到提示和技巧组.
Users and Administrators
There are two types of users: administrators and everyone else. Administrators choose the spotlight video that appears on everyone’s homepage, decide who can create channels, upload videos, and produce live events. They can also track usage details and user data.
By default, 用户可以选择语言和地区格式，并为他们的流门户和播放器选择主题, 尽管管理员可以取消此选项，并在Office 365中设置强制性的全公司主题. Also, using Office 365, you can insert your company logo and customize colors for the navigational bar, accents, text, and icons.
Users all have their own specific homepage; that’s what’s shown in Figure 1. As you can see on the top left, users can quickly navigate to their videos, groups, 和频道-跟随或其他-并查看他们之前添加到列表中的视频的观看列表.
Groups all have their own homepage, 哪些网站包含视频和频道，并允许管理员添加更多成员. Channels simply contain a list of videos.
Video-on-Demand Content
大多数用户将通过以下两种方式之一向流媒体添加内容:上传视频或直播. We’ll cover these options in that order.
Since Stream is built on top of Microsoft Azure, 它有一个非常能干的视频堆栈，可以输入大多数压缩和中间格式. 上传非常像youtube:在确定要上传的视频或视频之后, you fill in the name, the description, and any hashtags and choose a language and a thumbnail. 注意，您可以通过在Description字段中填写时间代码和主题来创建交互式目录, which really adds value to longer videos.
Then you choose which groups, channels, and users can watch the video (Figure 3). This part is cumbersome; there’s no drop-down list for employees, groups, or channels, just a search function. This is understandable for users since there may be thousands, 但在选择频道或群组时，可能会有一些粗糙的优势. Once you’ve decided who to share the video with, 选中“所有者”复选框，查看者就可以编辑视频设置, delete the video, and add the video to other groups and channels.
Figure 3. Assigning an uploaded video to channels, groups, and users
The next group of options is where things get interesting (Figure 4). 启用“人物”会打开一个时间轴视图，该视图使用面部识别来跟踪某个特定的人何时出现在画面中. During playback, viewers can navigate through the video by that person (Figure 8). 想象一下，一个会议有四个演讲者，一个摄像机跟踪每个演讲者. 这个功能可以让你跳转到视频中任何特定人物突出的部分. You can also choose to auto-generate a caption file or upload your own, which are features that I’ll explore below.
Figure 4. Choosing the final set of options for an uploaded video
Once you’ve uploaded the video, it’s automatically transcoded with per-title encoding, 在我们的测试中，它在平衡带宽和质量方面表现得有些熟练. 举个例子，我们的三个测试片段是一个屏幕截图，一个说话的头和一个足球游戏. Stream以692Kbps的速度生成了高质量的全分辨率(1080p)版本的屏幕截图, which looked good throughout most of the clip.
However, while Stream produced the football clip at a top data rate of 6.9Mbps, which was appropriate, it encoded the talking-head video to 6.6Mbps, which was unnecessarily high. 我测试过的其他每个标题选项通常以足球片段的一半数据速率编码谈话头片段. All that said, the quality was very good for both of these clips, which is what most viewers will care about.
Streaming Live With Stream
自上次评测以来，Stream新增的关键功能之一就是直播, which is well-integrated and simple to set up and produce. Setup is similar to video-on-demand (VOD) clips, 除了您可以选择开始和结束时间以及所有常规元数据(Figure 5). Or, you can elect to start the broadcast as soon as the encoder connects.
Figure 5. Streaming live with Stream and Wirecast
您可以通过复制流提供给编码器的服务器摄取URL并输入您的凭据来手动配置编码器. 流提供了五个编码器的预设，您只需选择您的编码器, and Stream will configure everything for you. I tried this with Telestream Wirecast, and it worked seamlessly. In essence, Stream creates a document in Wirecast, chooses the appropriate encoding preset, and enters all necessary addresses and credentials. 从那里，你设置音频和视频，并按下流，你就准备好了.
On my version of Wirecast (retail version 11), Stream当前不能打开一个现有的项目(在Wirecast中称为文档)，当它被Stream调用时, which essentially means that you have to configure cameras, audio, backgrounds, and titles for each project. However, if you use Wirecast S, a Microsoft Stream-specific, subscription-only version of Wirecast, you can open an existing project, and Stream will insert credentials, addresses, 并将编码预置到现有配置的音视频源及相关元素中. The bottom line is that integration likely varies by encoder, but even without a preset, connecting your encoder to Stream should be straightforward.
Although viewers of the live stream can “like” the video, the Stream player doesn’t enable comments when viewing a live stream. If you’re looking to start and watch over a dialogue among your employees, you can embed the video into Microsoft Teams, Yammer, or SharePoint Online.
Embedding Videos Into Other Office 365 Apps
Speaking of embedding, you can embed Stream videos into multiple Office 365 applications, with the specific technique varying by application. With SharePoint Online, 您可以将视频或频道的URL复制并粘贴到SharePoint页面(Figure 6). Again, since Stream and SharePoint are sister products, 感觉使用下拉列表或其他选择方法会更直观, although to be fair, 复制和粘贴URL是将视频嵌入网页的最常见方法, so it should be fairly intuitive for most users.
Figure 6. Embedding a Stream channel into a SharePoint page
Related Articles
LiveCTRL充分利用了松下PTZ摄像机提供的广播级视频, in a simple, clean, and very easy-to-carry iPad interface.
09 Nov 2019
流媒体的蒂姆·西格林在流媒体西部2018采访了微软首席首席项目经理克里斯·诺尔顿.
03 Dec 2018
Microsoft's new enterprise YouTube isn't ready for prime time yet, 但它提供了几个令人印象深刻的功能，使其成为未来12到18个月值得关注的产品
04 Aug 2016
Building from Office 365 Video, Stream is Microsoft's attempt at an end-to-end enterprise video platform. 现在任何人都可以免费试用，但该公司将在今年晚些时候开始收费.
18 Jul 2016