title: Is it possible to live-stream Video from Windows Azure
body: <p>I am looking into a project where they want to stream the input from several cameras to a central server.  The cameras are observing a production plant, and we need to be able to generate alerts (sms/mail) to operators (potenital outside the plant) to quickly connect to the cameras and review the problem.</p>
  
  <p>The users should be able to choose camera, and have a live video stream from the selected camera.
  The end user can be using PC (ie browser+silverlight) a smart phone (android, iphone, wp7) or a pad (android, ipad, win8)</p>
  
  <p>I also need to store the video stream (pr camera) for a configurable amount of time for "on demand playback"</p>
  
  <p>I was hoping Windows Azure + IIS Smooth Streaming + Expression Encoder 4.0 API could be used to solve this.</p>
  
  <p>I am wondering if I am thinking in the correct way here, or if we should choose some other solution..</p>
  
  <p>Here are some blog posts describing how to use Expression Encoder in Azure, but I havent seen anything about live streaming.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728356.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728356.aspx</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/01/using-expression-encoder-4-in-a-windows-azure-worker-role/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/01/using-expression-encoder-4-in-a-windows-azure-worker-role/</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.wadewegner.com/2010/08/using-the-expression-encoder-sdk-to-encode-lots-of-videos/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wadewegner.com/2010/08/using-the-expression-encoder-sdk-to-encode-lots-of-videos/</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Ideas ?</p>