Encoding and Streaming never was this easy
Our Smooth Streaming Server for Linux is a easy-to-use multi-user Encoding & Streaming Solution for the Web. Your Users can upload/download videos to the CSSS and encode them for multiple streaming formats like Microsofts innovative SmoothStreaming, Flash based H264 Pseudostreaming or as adaptive HTTP Stream for Apples popular iPhone. For detailed feature descriptions use the tabs on the right.
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Unified Streaming
Encode once and stream from one source as Silverlight Smoothstream, Adobe Flash 10.1 Adaptive Stream, iPhone HTTP Adaptive Stream or H264 Baseline/AAC for Android & Blackberrys. No more format hiccups, encode once and stream to all.
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Intuitive Interface
Your users do not need to know all the buzzwords and details about Streaming or Encoding, just let them logon to the CSSS Panel.
All necessary steps are explained and technical terms bring up an inline help and suggestions if hovered with the mouse cursor.
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Livestreaming
Stream live video in multiple Bitrates from a Webcam, Capture-Card or even a pre-recorded stream. Or just re-stream rtp and http streams.
Livestreams can be viewed as unified stream with Silverlight, Flash 10.1 and the iphone.
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Restrictions and Limits
You can Limit all CSSS Users wether it is traffic limit, diskspace, traffic shapping (also shape only after traffic limit is reached), maximum numbers of concurrent encoding jobs, amount of cpu cores to use per encoding job and so on.
Users can restrict access to videos. Only allow ips in a whitelist, only specified countrys or all countrys except selected.
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Small, Big or in the cloud
You can use CSSS for Small Stuff with only one Server as Master for encoding and serving. Or split it up to multiple encoding nodes with hundreds of users for the Big fish.
CSSS is also CDN and Caching aware, it is very easy to cache the streaming video fragments. SimpleCDN with its MirrorBucket as example or an caching squid in front of it without configuration change.
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Save Money
The CSSS licensing is fair and easy. You only pay for the CSSS , we will not limit your amount of users,videos or livestreams.
Starting from 97$ for a Master License with Basic-Support and 47$ for aditional encoding-nodes. Or just pick monthly managed CSSS up to a unmetered and unshared gigabit port! Check the Store
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Support
Basic E-Mail Support with 24-72 Hour Response Time is included for 1 Year in the Basic-License, that gives you access to our Ticket-System.
Additional you can purchase Yearly Support Licenses with 24/7 Phone and Mail Support with 6-12 Hour Response Time that also include Remote-Support.
Silverlight Smooth Streaming
SmoothStreaming for Silverlight was originaly developed by MicroSoft™ for Streaming the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in a way so that low-bitrate and high-bitrate users could enjoy it online without annoying buffering screens. Smooth Streaming is included as an extension to IIS7, or trought Codeshops technology on Linux as included in the Clavain Smooth Streaming Server
The video is encoded into multiple Bitrates (like low,medium,high) and the Player automatically picks the one that fits the Connection speed of a user. Additionaly the Player scales up to the next better bitrate without freezing or stopping the video if more bandwith is available, same reverse with lower quality.
SmoothStreaming is the perfect choice for True High Defintion Online Streaming H264 Video with AAC Audio. Allthought the Quality and Experience of the User with a SmoothStream is superior it needs a long time to encode the videos since you need to convert the same video in multiple bitrates and resolutions.
Adobe HTTP Streaming
With Flash 10.1 Adobe introduces Adaptive HTTP Streaming aswell. The Smoothstreaming output files from CSSS can be used with LongTail Videos JW Player 5. So you do not need to encode for Silverlight and Flash. Encode once and play with Silverlight or Flash. Click here to experience Adobe Flash 10.1 Adaptive Streaming
We got it!
The Clavain Smooth Streaming Server supports Encoding and Serving SmoothStreams in H264 with AAC or MP3.
(Example) Generated SmoothStreaming Profile Tab in the CSSS-Panel: 
Flash 10.1 Adaptive Streaming
You can play unified streams and the silverlight smoothstreams generated by CSSS also with Flash 10.1 (without re-encoding). We offer a special plugin for JW Player to play this multi-bitrate streams with the same features Silverlight Smoothstreaming has to offer.
Check Out Flash 10.1 Adaptive Streaming
Flash 9+ H264 Pseudostreaming
CSSS also supports traditional none-adaptive streaming (means fixed bitrate). You can upload and encode your videos to H264/AAC.
This files can then be played by any compatible player, for flash as example JWPlayer or flowplayer. Or download the Videos and play it with VideoLAN etc.
Pseudostreaming means that your viewers can jump to any location in the video without downloading the complete file. So your users could watch only the last 5 minutes of a 2 hour movie without downloading the complete file.
Check it Out
Click the picture to load player
iPhone/iPad Adaptive HTTP Streaming
Starting with iPhone OS version 3.0 the popular iPhone/iPod touch and the iPad support Adaptive HTTP Streaming.
CSSS supports generation and encoding of iPhone streaming profiles with H264 Video and AAC-LC or MP3. The produced output is compatible with the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPads and can additional be viewed as SmoothStream or Flash 10.1 HTTP Stream.
Android & Blackberry Streaming
Optional you can enable Android/Blackberry Support in the iPhone Profile generation, this will also deploy the unfragmented output files for any device that is capable of playing Baseline H264 with the selected Audiostream (AAC-LC or MP3) such as Blackberrys and mobile phones with googles Android OS.
QR-CODE Support & Dispatching
For all iPhone Profiles the CSSS will create a QR-Code that links to the Playlist. Your viewers can scan the code with there mobile phone cameras and watch the content without typing in long URLs.
If you enabled the Android/Blackberry option for the requested profile, the QR-Code will lead to a dispatcher that redirects to the approriate stream for the requesting device. iPhones/iPods and iPads will see the Apple Stream, while Desktop Users will see the SmoothStream. Other devices such as the Blackberry and Android phones will see a bitrate selection screen where the user can select a profile (like edge,umts,lan) and then load the unfragmented file.
Check it out
Scan the QR-Code above with your mobile phone or visit the following url with your mobile phone to call the dispatcher manualy:
http://csss.clavain.co.uk/dispatch/2
Content Access Restrictions
In the Clavain Smooth Streaming Server you can restrict access to content by allow only specific countrys or block unwanted countrys.
All you need todo is to set the block type and enter the TLDs of the countrys you want to block or allow. Mapping is done my MaxMinds GeoIP Database which translates IP adresses to countrys.
This is the ideal solution to ensure that your content can only be viewed from within your advertisers target audience or to keep up with content licensing terms.
Example of the Access Restriction Tab
Only viewers from the United States, United Kingdom and Germany can watch the video, all others are redirected to www.accessdenied.com
If you specify a video as redirect url, this video will be played instead of the original one.
User Resource Restrictions
Nothing is more anoying then some powerusers eating up all your server resources. With your own deployed Clavain Smooth Streaming Server you can limit resources for each individual user. such as:
- - Concurrent Running Encoding Jobs
- - CPU Cores per Encoding Job
- - Harddisk Space
- - Traffic Limit
- - Traffic Speed Limit
You can also set speed limits that will take effect after a users monthly traffic limit is due. As example that a user who used 5GB outgoing traffic this month gets a speed limit of 50kb/s for all outgoing streams.
Industry leading Technology
The Clavain Smooth Streaming Server is beside other components based on CodeShops SmoothStreaming implementation for Linux.
This allows us to fragment and serve files from one unified source to multiple outputs like Silverlight, Flash and the iPhone.
CodeShop is a leading provider of cross-platform video streaming technologies.
CodeShop’s products are in operation around the world with customers ranging from broadcast networks and online content distributors to small companies and webcasters.
Restful XML API
The Clavain Smooth Streaming Server comes with a easy-to-use XML API for all users. You can implement almost all features of the panel with the programing language of your choice.
Thus you can integrate CSSS in your applications or create a hosting service for your paying customers, add support for your billing and webhosting system and so on.
The Admin calls include all management tasks like add/edit/delete users while the user api calls are responsible for queueing videos for encoding, content restrictions etc.
Multinode Encoding
No Budget for the latest shiny hardware with thousands of cpu cores, or you have a good infrastructure of servers that can do the job or living in the cloud? No Problem!
The Clavain Smooth Streaming Server is build around a Master->Node concept.
While the Master can work without nodes and encode itself you can unleash the true power by adding other Servers in your network (or wherever they are) as encoding nodes.
A CSSS encoding node contain the same encoding components like the master but without the overhead needed for serving the data (no webserver, no database etc.)
This nodes connect to the Masterserver and sign-on as available resources automatically, the master then can assign encoding jobs to this nodes by sending the source file and later receive the encoded output.
A node needs almost zero configuration, all you need todo is to install the node package and start it with the hostname/ip, port and the authorisation password for the master.
Easy Setup and Maintainance
We belive in Software that is easy and transparent to the end-user. You do not need to be the best Bastard Operator from Hell in your town to install and maintain the Clavain Smooth Streaming Server.
CSSS Installation is done by extracting the package and run the install script and then you can initialize the system with your web-browser thats it.
You can also enable the autoupdate option so that your CSSS installations stays up2date all the time so that you never miss one of the new features or bugfixes.
Screenshots
Visit our Screenshots Page for CSSS Shots.
Unified Live Streaming
The Clavain Smooth Streaming Server supports unified Livestreaming from one source. You can stream to a CSSS publishing point and watch the stream with Silverlight, Flash 10.1 and Apple Products like the Phone/iPod/iPad or with Quicktime
Streaming Tools AND API Integration
The API implements methods to add,configure and retrieve stream informations so you can easily create your own livestreaming applications. A Easy-to-Use Livestreaming GUI aswell a Linux CLI tool is included
in the UserPanel that can be used to livestream or restream to a CSSS Publishingpoint.
- Check out our Windows Livestreaming Tutorial
- Check out our Linux Livestreaming Tutorial
Example of CSSS Unified Livestreaming in Action:
Livestreaming with FFmpeg
We provide a customer Open Source muxer from codeshop as patch for the popular open source software encoder/decoder ffmpeg. The User Panel also comes with an easy-to-use graphical streaming client for streaming a local file or restream a network stream.
Thus making it possible to livestream any input ffmpeg can read aswell restreaming from other livesources such as rtmp. Just set a csss publishingpoint as output in ffmpeg and it will do the fragmenting and sends the encoded output as chunks to the webserver.
If you encode Baseline compatible output you can not only watch the content with Silverlight and Flash 10.1 as Adaptive Stream with multiple bitrates but also on the iPhone or iPad.
You can also Limit access restrictions (block or allow only specific countries) and publishers in the Userpanel or tru the CSSS API.