[THIN] Re: Video not working in Citrix
- From: "Andrew Wood" <andrew.wood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:28:40 -0000
Yes and no – let’s be honest about the functionality here.
You can, if you’ve 4.5/5.0 and the latest feature pack (which is 3 as of today
isn’t it – or at least 2 ) make use of some updated HDX technologies. If you’ve
2008 servers you have to have FR3 – some of these features weren’t supported on
2008 in FR2.
You could (although for some reason Angela can’t – and I suspect this is a
proxy issue on the Ctx server) run the video on the Citrix server – if this was
LAN based most video formats aren’t going to hose the performance of the
server. By default on a WAN however it’s likely that the user’s experience of
the video is going to be choppy – with some audio issues.
You can make use of the Speedscreen Progressive Display settings that are
available to you as part of your citrix connection policies. You can look at
selecting different levels of compression to provide a good balance between
frame rate and the visual quality of each frame given the effective network
bandwidth that's available. So it does need some testing. While there's plenty
of bandwidth to deliver a high frame rate and high frame quality on a LAN, on a
remote connection you can’t choose an image quality setting that's bandwidth
intensive. With Progressive Display you can modify your Image Acceleration
Policy (configured in the Citrix Management Console) to use the High
Compression setting or, if you’ve lower bandwidth you might prefer to use Very
High Compression – there’s even a ‘i’ve a bit of string for my remote comms -
set compression to stun’ I think . You can configure a policy that only enables
this feature for your remote devices. These changes come at a “cost” – they’ll
all bump up CPU demand on the server but, it can enable you to get a better
multimedia experience over a WAN connection.
There are “content redirection” options for rendering on the end device (and so
taking load off of the server) but only for certain media types – Flash
redirection for example works only for Flash – not for QuickTime and
Silverlight. Also, if network latency is high the default fall back for HDX is
to go back to server-side redirection: so you could do a lot of effort and end
up having it delivered from the server anyways.
If you’re running published apps you could enable server to client content
redirection – Here’s a doc that explains how that needs to be configured
(http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX113457) > what this does, is redirect web
links to be run in the local browser. This gives you the facility to redirect
http & https and real player/quicktime and microsoft’s media streaming to the
local client’s browser. Bear in mind now you’ve got to open up web access to
those devices. Even if we put aside the questions around ‘are your devices
up-to-date with codecs, IE security updates and add-ins’, is your 4Mb branch
link going to be able to cope with that extra content demand? Potentially
that’s not how you did it before and the increased web traffic may impact on
your existing ICA use. Also, now your browser is local – is that going to
impact on anything else? Intranet access? Printing from web pages? Integration
with your Sharepoint?
Maybe full redirection is a bridge too far: I don’t know many places that used
it extensively. But now, we’ve the wonders of HDX Mediastream – which appears
as SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration in your Citrix connection policies. This
s enabled by default (so you shouldn’t have to do anything on the Citrix
servers)
Here’s a document on Troubleshooting HDX media stream -
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104912. When HDX MediaStream is working, a
black rectangle will quickly flash by as the video begins to play – although
the media player appears to start on the citrix server – the content is
delivered from the client. Obviously, for the client you need a windows PC or
a device that HDX. The same goes for HDX Mediastream for flash
(http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124190). There is a tool available for
verifying the whole shebang – which you can get here:
http://hdxflash.codeplex.com/. The Flash stuff is pretty clever when it works
– again it’ll use local resources - it puts the Adobe flash “in” the ‘server
based’ IE session. Flash performance is much better. With both these
features, server CPU usage will be lower than if the video were being rendered
on the server and Progressive display is enabled). Yet, both of these features
require that your client is up-to-date, correctly configured and both (like the
server to client content redirection) need the clients to be able to access the
web – if these criteria fail, of if the network latency becomes too high – its
back to server side rendering.
‘4.5 or later with the latest client gives you client rendering which gives
better performance’ needs to be tempered with ‘in some situations, some of the
time and can impact on other things’
Have fun Angela.
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Magnus Hjorleifsson
Sent: 23 March 2010 23:57
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [THIN] Re: Video not working in Citrix
If you are using 4.5 or 5.0 with the 11.2 client the processing would be
renedered on the clien not the server which would make performance much better.
You have to ensure the client device have the correct codecs( adobe flash
..,etc) to reap those benefits
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 23, 2010, at 8:26, "Andrew Wood" <andrew.wood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
“Since the video is running on citrix wouldn't the traffic being sent to the
client be screen changes only hence would be small?”
Its video – so potentially its actually lots of screen changes as the image is
moving. Its not a excel spreadsheet with figures changing. It may well travel
within your ICA bandwidth – but it’s unlikely to be a great experience.
Content redirection? Do/will your end devices support that? And if you do
redirect, although the rendering is now done at the client end (which means
their ‘view’ is better) now the whatever MB file needs to be streamed down to
the user – possibly to each device and possibly concurrently: more data? quite
possibly – while its streamed to the client you may find that they can utilise
local buffering – so it takes a while to download they can then play the file
locally. However, while its downloading are you then impacting on the standard
ICA traffic that is going up and down the line?
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Angela Smith
Sent: 22 March 2010 22:32
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Video not working in Citrix
Hi
Sounds like the video is being blocked. Work Offline option is not enabled in
Media Player so not sure why it is not working..
Users are all in small branches around the country. We have 4Mb Frame links so
was hoping it would work. We are hoping all users dont hit the video at the
same time but it is a possibility. Since the video is running on citrix
wouldn't the traffic being sent to the client be screen changes only hence
would be small?
Would it be better to redirect all media content to run on local PC via content
redirection or would that be worse as the entire video is download?
Not sure how to proceed...
Ang
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