Azure Media Services open file handling when streaming audio

Question

I am currently working on a structure to stream an audio file using Azure Media Services. Is it possible to stream an audio file from Azure storage such as blob storage while the file is being uploaded and is open? The audio file will most likely be open while we wish to stream it. We want to be able to play the file in "real-time" and be able to replay the file, but the file will be opened for other uses as well. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Sorry, no this is not supported by AMS today. We do not support writing to a VOD file while streaming it.

The only support we have for write while reading is through the LiveEvent API, which requires you to be sending content into us using the RTMP or Smooth Streaming protocol. In that situation, we are actually writing fragments to storage and managing them in a format that our origin streaming servers can understand for delivery while live streaming is coming in.

If you can make your solution work with RTMP or Smooth Ingest protocol format, then you could use the Live event Pass-through mode API to achieve the desired result.

Is your question purely around audio? What is the actual use case scenario you are trying to achieve? Customer experience?

Answer 2

The live Event architecture can support audio only as well. You just have to send in Audio only via RTMP or Smooth ingest protocol.

For your scenario, you may also want to look at just generating HLS static content using FFMPEG directly into storage. That may be all you need. FFMPEG can take an audio stream and write it out as HLS content.
Static HLS content in Azure Storage can still be streamed to any client that supports HLS.