Event ID 312 — Unicast Logging

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

You can configure Logging plug-ins in Windows Media Services to keep a record, a log file, of client and server activity during a streaming session. Log information can also help:

• Track server usage so that you can decide when you might need to add more resources to your system.
• Assist you in planning your security implementation. For example, if your system is subjected to a denial-of-service attack, log files can help you determine which clients are being used in the attack.
• Identify user-reported issues with your streaming system by providing event codes that correspond to common issues.
• Provide historical data for use in trend analysis and business cases.

For more information, see Logging Model for Windows Media Services.

Event Details

Resolve

Restart the logging plug-in

To restart the WMS Client Logging plug-in:

1. On the Windows Media server, open Windows Media Services. To open Windows Media Services, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Windows Media Services.
2. In the console tree, click the Windows Media server or the on-demand publishing point for which you want to log data.
3. In the details pane, click the Properties tab.
4. In Category, click Logging.
5. In Plug-in, right-click WMS Client Logging, and then click Disable.
6. In Plug-in, right-click WMS Client Logging, and then click Enable.

Note: After you restart the plug-in, the plug-in will try to log data to the unicast log file at the beginning of the next log cycle period. To begin a new log immediately, click Cycle Now in the WMS Client Logging Properties dialog box. If the plug-in stops logging due to insufficient free disk space, the plug-in will try to log data to the unicast log file immediately after sufficient free disk space is made available. If the plug-in stops logging for any other reason and the conditions that caused the failure are corrected, the plug-in will try to log data to the unicast log file at the start of the next log cycle period.

Verify

To verify that the client logs are being created correctly, test a stream by using Windows Media Player:

1. If you want to test the stream by using Windows Media Player on the computer that is running Windows Media Services, you must install Desktop Experience. For more information, see Installing Desktop Experience.
2. In Windows Media Services, in the console tree, click the publishing point that hosts a stream that you want to test.
3. In the details pane, click the Announce tab, and then, in Connect to a unicast stream, note the value of the URL that a client can use to access the content.
4. Start Windows Media Player on a computer that can access the stream, and enter the URL that you noted in the previous step.
5. Using the Player controls, test the control functionality of the content stream. Broadcast streams can use the Start and Stop commands. On-demand streams can use the Start, Stop, and Pause commands, and the Seek bar.
6. Test all the available streaming protocols. A unicast stream will try to connect by using the MMS protocol, but will switch to the RTSP protocol if network conditions or the Player version requires it. The HTTP protocol is not active unless the WMS HTTP Server Control Protocol plug-in is enabled. For more information, see About data transfer protocols.
7. Allow the stream to play for a representative period of time and check that the stream quality is sufficient for the type of content and the capabilities of the equipment.
8. View the fields in the log file to confirm that they are filled in correctly. For more information, see Log File Entries Reference.

Note: You can use a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) value created by Windows Media Player to identify the Player connection to the Windows Media server and view the log entries created by the Player that you use in your test environment. The c-playerid field in the log is used to record the Player ID value. To help protect user privacy, the option to send unique Player identification information to content providers is turned off in Windows Media Player. For Player log entries, if the Player is configured to not send this information, the recorded value in c-playerid is: {3300AD50-2C39-46c0-AE0A-xxxxxxxxxxxx}, where x is the session ID of the client. To identify the log entries generated by the Player in your test environment, you can enable the option to send a unique Player ID on the Privacy tab in Windows Media Player. For more information, see the Windows Media Player Privacy Statement.

Related Management Information

Unicast Logging

Streaming Media Services