title: Creating and Streaming a composite manifest file in Windows Azure
body: <p>I'm currenly developing an application using Windows Azure Media Services for video processing.</p>
  
  <p>The scenario is: a user manages a sequence of video clips, puts them in a specific order and submits them to Media Services for processing.</p>
  
  <p>I managed to stream the clips individually using they're *.ism/manifest url generated by Azure Media Services, but I want to stream them as a single clip. </p>
  
  <p>I understand Azure Media Services does not provide merging/stitching capability for now, so the alternative is to use a composite streaming manifest file (*.csm) and reference the path of all the individual clips there.</p>
  
  <p>The problems I run into are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>I could not find a single playable *.csm file on the internet as a reference</p></li>
  <li><p>I used this tool <a href="http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpapps/Smooth-Streaming-Manifest-b1c3c9f9/view/SourceCode" rel="nofollow">http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpapps/Smooth-Streaming-Manifest-b1c3c9f9/view/SourceCode</a> to generate a .csm based on an existing/playable ism/manifest, but I don't know how to play it.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>The ism streaming url is something like: </p>
  
  <p>http://.origin.mediaservices.windows.net/dd754ce8-3de8-457f-9e57-380723794e66/clipName.ism/Manifest </p>
  
  <p>and is stored in Media Services and the actual files .ism and .ismv files are stored in a storage container like asset-1707d318-0484-4f8c-8f66-890786ccb1e3</p>
  
  <p>Where should I store the *.csm file in Azure? Is there any running .csm player with samples available so I can test my generated .csm?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,</p>
  
  <p>Florin</p>