Executive speeches

Applies To: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2

Two of the most common corporate uses of Windows Media Services are broadcasting executive speeches and company meetings. When these corporate speeches and meetings are broadcast by using Windows Media Services, employees that are located in other areas do not have to travel or miss the speech. Presenters can give the speech at their convenience, and the meeting can be prerecorded instead of live.

Using Windows Media Services, the corporations can choose to broadcast the content as a live presentation or record it and broadcast it later. In addition, the presentations can be made available to viewers when they request it.

When implementing this scenario, consider the following:

• Encoding software is optimized for live streaming or recording. Choose the appropriate encoding software for the approach you want to use. For example, Microsoft Expression Encoder can encode a live stream directly to your Windows Media server but it does not provide you with the opportunity to edit the content. Alternatively, Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint enables you to create and edit a presentation from a live source and synchronize it with a set of PowerPoint slides, but it cannot transmit a live stream.

• Each client that connects to your server requires network bandwidth. Determine whether it is best for all of your clients to connect to the stream at the same time or whether it is be better to schedule users to access the server at different times. Also consider whether you want to deliver the broadcast using multicast transmission to conserve network bandwidth.

• You can use Windows Media Services to archive a broadcast stream to a file. After the stream has been archived, you can rebroadcast the file or make it available for clients later by using an on-demand publishing point.