Since the release of Expression Encoder 2 back in May of this year, we’ve been hard at work on new features. Today we are announcing Expression Encoder 2 SP1, which we plan to release by the end of the year as a free upgrade to Expression Encoder 2. There are a wide variety of enhancements across many areas of the product in this release and you’ll find a comprehensive list below. The three top-line features are: Silverlight 2 templates, H.264 support and WebDAV publishing available out of the box. Additionally, and consistent with a service pack release, we’ve fixed a decent number of bugs.
Our SIlverlight Player templates provide a quick and easy way to get a Silverlight video experience created including rich functionality such as DVD style chapter navigation, subtitles and metadata. With the advent of Silverlight 2, the first Silverlight release to including the .NET CLR, we have completely rewritten our player from the ground up.
MediaPlayer control
For starters, we’ve made a Silverlight 2 custom control called MediaPlayer. This is a core component shared by all of our new templates. It is completely customizable via our integrated “Edit in Blend”, just like the Silverlight 2 intrinsic controls.
Some of the new properties of the player include
You can use the MediaPlayer control outside of our player templates simply by referencing the project (source code included in the box). It is quick and easy to get up and running in XAML. Reference the control and instantiate thus:
When editing in Blend, rich UI is available for editing properties (e.g. playlists as shown here:)
Finally, we’ve removed all of the complex JavaScript needed to invoke the player from an HTML page; this is now accomplished with a simple <object/> tag.
Since we shipped our V1 release, we’ve heard loud and clear from customers that they’d like more output formats than just VC-1. One of the most common scenarios that kept cropping up is content producers that are embracing Silverlight for web video but also wish to make the content available as a Podcast for devices.
We are therefore happy to announce that, starting with V2 SP1, we are adding H.264/AAC encoding to the product. For this release we are supporting two device profiles: a baseline 320x240 for smaller flash memory based devices and a 640x480 profile for larger screen resolutions.
Since it has been announced that Silverlight is going to support H.264 you can expect us to broaden our encoding support for the format in the future.
Band mode allows you to drag out a number of bands (as many or as few as you need) to better discern the difference between original and encoded videos. As before, you can play back in the mode and rotate the bands through 90 degrees.
Diff Mode plots the degree of difference of the source vs encoded as a luminance map. If the encoded clip is identical to the source, its difference would be rendered all black (this can be inverted by double-clicking).
Audio overlays work just like video overlays only they now enable you to overlay an audio track complete with relative level and fade in / out.
They also enable a workflow for adding an external audio track to a mute video source and outputting a muxed A/V output.
We’ve also enabled the audio from a video overlay to be enabled / mixed in if desired.
Publish to IIS, Sharepoint and other servers that support the WebDAV protocol.
There is a reasonably large list of small fixes that have gone into this release, many too minor to mention. The following are the more noteworthy:
· Copy/paste markers and script commands: e.g. to/from Excel
· Cancelling multi-file encode no longer deletes completed items
· Removing items from jobs no longer deletes output
· Enhanced trimming of overlays (from front, drag middle)
· Run encode as background priority: so you can still use your machine for other tasks. Controllable via a setting
· Mouse wheel support for zooming, mouse pan support
· Enhanced Warning Triangles
· Better default for cropping output. E.g. If you have a 16:9 video that only had 4:3 video inside it, if you choose 4:3 output and select crop, we’ll automatically crop out the correct portion in the middle.
· Edit in Visual Studio option for templates
· Couple of additional VC-1 advanced encoding properties
· We now index unindex WMV/ASF files
· Source Mode stream copying will now work even for cases where we don’t support the source CODEC as an output type in our UI e.g. WMScreen
So there we have it. As always, feedback gratefully received,
Hope this helps
The Expression Encoder Team
Welcome to the new Expression Encoder team blog! As Charles says in the video, we plan on posting a bunch for hints and tips over the coming weeks. We also encourage you to give us your feedback.
All of our video blog posts are made with Expression Encoder and published using Silverlight on the Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live video hosting service.
We are currently hard at work on the next release and look forward to sharing the details soon. Thanks for watching / reading!
Helloooo from Mix 08.. we can finally talk about what the Expression Encoder team have been up to for the last 6 months. Let's talk (and apologies in advance for the length of this post!).
Today we are announcing Expression Encoder 2, the second version of Microsoft’s contemporary video authoring platform.
In a nutshell we have been extremely busy incorporating your feedback and balancing our small, nimble resources across a number of competing goals:
1) to satisfy video compressionist’s desire for a best of breed VC-1 encoding tool
2) to bring new tools into the hands of all comers wishing to embrace the Silverlight video tidal wave and..
3) to enable the rapid authoring of interactive media by integrating enhanced content creation tools into the encoder.
Expression Encoder 2 is now a product in its own right rather than a feature of Expression Media. It’s part of Expression Studio 2 and also available standalone.
Before we step through what’s new, it's also worth mentioning that there are some really exciting new features that you've asked us for that we are not ready to announce just yet. Stay tuned for more details.
Another point to call out: Expression Encoder 2 continues to target Silverlight 1 experiences; the updated templates use loose XAML and JavaScript as before. This is in common with the whole of Expression Studio 2. At MIX, we are demoing an early preview of our Silverlight 2 managed Baseplayer. This component provides all of the playback functionality inside an Expression template. The new managed baseplayer enables the template developer to extend the base functionality (playback, chapters, captions etc) using the managed languages they know and love and add interactivity, custom behaviors etc. We'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks.
So to the list..
Better Encoding
Better Silverlight Interactive experiences
The second bucket of functionality covers improvements to Silverlight output.
Enhanced Content Creation tools
Object model
We heard loud and clear that developers wanted to be able to programmatically use our encoding engine.
Other Stuff
There are a ton of other improvements that are too many to list in full. Among these are:
So there is the list for now. You can get our beta bits as part of the Expression Studio 2 beta package from here.
Please continue to give us great feedback and stay tuned for our MIX video podcasts where we'll be recording some demos and other goodness over the next few days.
Thanks,
We on the Expression Encoder team are proud to announce that Expression Encoder 3 is complete and will shortly be available! Since releasing V2 SP1 back in November of 2008 we have worked hard to improve core encoding capabilities, continued to enhance new features such as Smooth Streaming, H.264 and editing as well as broaden the applicability of the product by adding new features such as Screen Capture.
We have also focused heavily on our Silverlight output upgrading the MediaPlayer control to Silverlight 3 and the template skins that are based on it. We’ll drill into the details of what is new over the course of this post and look forward to hearing your feedback.
So how do you get Encoder 3? We’ll keep you in suspense a little while longer and direct you to the http://team.silverlight.net blog for the official announcement of Expression Studio 3.
We’ll start our tour of what’s new with the enhancements to the core encoding engine of the product.
Improved H.264. First up, we’ve improved the H.264 encoder that was part of V2 SP1 by adding support for custom resolutions (V2 SP1 was limited to two portable device-specific resolutions), single pass CBR, VBR Constrained, VBR unconstrained and Quality-based VBR rate control methods, Main Profile support, B-Frame support and advanced settings which include the ability to choose between the two major Entropy modes of Context-adaptive variable-length coding (CAVLC) and Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CAVAC).
VBR Smooth Streaming. Microsoft is investing heavily in Smooth Streaming across its product lines, which in conjunction with Silverlight, enables everyone to watch great quality video on the web at up to full HD 1080p. One of the results, that we are very excited to be shipping, is a brand new VC-1 encoder that has been optimized specifically for the multi-bitrate, multi-resolution nature of IIS Smooth Streaming. Some of the features of the new technology include:
Source CODECs. In Encoder 3, we’ve broadened our support for source CODECs. We have improved the performance of our H.264 decoder as well as adding support for AVCHD format. We’ve also added some enhancements to our QuickTime stack to enable compatibility with ProRes which will help with post production workflows. We are also pleased to be shipping Dolby Digital decoding in the box. Finally, we’ve added the ability to import Smooth Streaming files so that you can review an encode outside Silverlight. In this case, you are able to open the .ism file and the largest stream will be rendered. This final feature is also available outside of Expression Encoder because we register the decoder on the system. This means that once the full version of Expression Encoder has been installed, other applications on the system that can make use of DirectShow source filters will be able to open .ismv files.
Audio Enhancements. We heard your feedback and added support for multi-channel audio output:
We have also added the ability to select between multiple audio streams, where sources have them, as well as support for the Voice codec and VBR audio encoding. Last but not least, we dynamically determine what audio encoding capabilities are available from the host OS.
Performance. Performance is something we are never done with. In Encoder 3 we’ve made great progress, particularly on multi-core, multi-processor scenarios. First off, our core encoders have been rev’d to include support for newer Intel SSE instructions as well as support for up to 8 physical cores. Secondly, we’ve improved CPU utilization on multi-core systems by parallelizing preprocessing tasks. To illustrate the improvements, here are some before and after comparison charts based on analysis of Encoder 2 and Encoder 3 performance:
Core 2 Duo Laptop; Vertical axis time in seconds – smaller is better; V2 in blue, V3 in red; results aggregated from 6 different source files
Dual proc 8 Core Xeon; Vertical axis time in seconds – smaller is better; V2 in blue, V3 in red; results aggregated from 6 different source files
We are working on more performance comparisons including i7 Nehalem systems which we’ll publish in due course.
Live Encoding. We spent a bunch of time in this release moving the Live portion of our encoder over to using the new encoding pipeline first introduced in Encoder 2. This results in some immediate benefits such as better performance and de-interlacing support as well as some potential future benefits. We’ve also added support for WMA Pro audio in Live, a new object model for Live (more details on this in the API section) and support for a broader range of capture devices.
In recent years, screen-casting has become an extremely popular way of sharing information you are looking at on your system with other users; encompassing eLearning, product support, user-generated content and many other domains. Included with Expression Encoder 3 is a new application called Expression Encoder Screen Capture available in the start menu or from within the main Expression Encoder UI.
You simply decide if you want to record webcam, and mic as well as the screen and system sound, pick a screen region with the easy to use Window picker (or by free-form selection):
.. and start capturing. One of the benefits of our new implementation is that we capture to a light weight intermediate CODEC, developed by Microsoft Research, rather than attempting to capture and encode directly to VC-1 or H.264. This leaves more of the CPU available for the application you are capturing. After capture, it is easy to import the sources into Expression Encoder for final encoding and Silverlight templating if required.
Improved profile palette. As Expression Encoder has evolved between versions, the old Encoding settings palette had became increasingly unwieldy.. so for Encoder 3 we rebuilt it from the ground up.
The most common encoding settings are now easier to find and set. The advanced encoding settings are hidden by default so you only see the options you need. And the ability to address different output CODECs is now explicitly designed in.
Inside audio and video sections, there are many enhancements that make day to day tasks easier such as changing the aspect ratio or configuring multiple streams for Smooth Streaming.
Preset Palette. Encoder 3 now has a more extensive library of encoding presets including an expanded set that target devices such as Xbox, iPod, Zune and the forthcoming Zune HD, online video services such as Facebook and YouTube and an expanded and improved set that target IIS Smooth Streaming. As well as the expanded library, we have also added a new searchable preset palette where both system and user presets are stored as well as the ability to easily apply presets to all items via right-click.
Dockable palettes. In common with the rest of the Expression 3 suite, Encoder 3 now uses the common palette docking framework which enables you to lay out your interface however you choose by simply dragging palettes and either popping them out into floating windows or grouping them into docked locations. The Hide Palettes function has also been enhanced allowing the hidden palettes to pop open on hover.
Summary Palette. Summary information has been moved into a separate palette which can be displayed via the Window menu.
Cog Menus. In order to streamline palette-specific functions, we’ve introduced cog menus:
Cog menus are present on all palettes. We’ve also got rid of the small white dot menus that were somewhat undiscoverable :-).
Editing Enhancements. In Encoder 2, we had the concept of adding a leader and trailer to a main file. In Encoder 3, we have removed leader and trailer and replaced it with an extended Clips palette which enables multiple items to be stitched together. This enables scenarios such as multiple leaders / trailers, Ad insertion and simple editing.
It is also possible to set the stretch mode per clip and choose to apply crop which was not previously possible with leader and trailer. You can append still frames (and set their duration) as well as XAML animations. Note that all of the enhanced editing capabilities are also available through the object model.
The Silverlight mediaplayers that have shipped in the box with Expression Encoder since V1 make it really easy to publish videos that target Silverlight. In Encoder 3, we have updated all of the included templates to be based upon Silverlight 3 which means they are offered in the easy to use and deploy XAP format and all share the same common MediaPlayer control at their core. We have also exposed the core MediaPlayer control in the Blend 3 toolbox which makes it easy for designers to embed and customize a full featured MediaPlayer in their projects that supports captions, chapters, smooth streaming etc.
SL3 specific features. We have added a number of Silverlight 3 specific features to all of the new players including
New Player Skins. We have worked with ace design firm Archetype to create some great new player skins featuring smoothly animating controls and new Silverlight 3 features such as perspective transform.
Other Silverlight Improvements:
Expression Encoder has had a .NET API since Version 2. In Version 3, we are making some changes:
Object Model for Live Encoding. Live encoding now has an object model so you can create applications that capture and stream from live capture sources as shown here:
1: using (LiveJob job = new LiveJob())
2: {
3: // Create a new file source from the file name we were passed in
4: LiveFileSource fileSource = job.AddFileSource(fileToEncode);
5:
6: fileSource.PlaybackMode = FileSourcePlaybackMode.Loop;
7:
8: //Alternatively, enumerate a capture device (not shown here)
9:
10: job.ActivateSource(fileSource);
11:
12: WindowsMediaBroadcastOutputFormat outputFormat = new WindowsMediaBroadcastOutputFormat();
13:
14: // Let's broadcast on the local machine on port 8080
15: outputFormat.BroadcastPort = 8080;
16:
17: // Set the output format on the job
18: job.OutputFormat = outputFormat;
19:
20: // Start encoding
21: Console.Out.Write("Press 'x' to stop encoding...");
22: job.StartEncoding();
23:
24: while (Console.ReadKey(true).Key != ConsoleKey.X)
25: {
26: // We are waiting for the 'x' key
27: }
28:
29: // Stop our encoding
30: Console.Out.WriteLine("Encoding stopped.");
31: job.StopEncoding();
32: }
Refactored Encoding Profile OM. In addition to refactoring the Encoding profile palette, we have also refactored the underlying object model for configuring profiles making it simpler to use. Instead of a monolithic Profile class, settings have been broken into a class hierarchy allowing the app to more easily and logically support multiple output CODECs such as H.264 and VC-1.
SDK in the Box. The SDK is now shipped along with the application. It has also been updated to include more samples, including a Powershell cmdlet sample.
Redistributable version of Expression Encoder. We will also be offering a no fee redistributable version of Expression Encoder for developers who wish to ship applications using the SDK. Stay tuned for more information on this that we’ll share here on the blog in due course.
Windows 7 Superbar Progress: View at a glance how far through the encode has progressed:
First pass: Second pass:
First pass:
Second pass:
Removal of PS 2.0 requirement: We had feedback from users of older graphics cards that did not support Pixel Shader 2.0 that they were unhappy that they could not preview video. So in Encoder 3, we still take advantage of PS 2.0 if present, but do not require it for preview.
Support for LargeAddressAware flag: Some of the new features, in particular the new VBR Smooth Streaming Encoder, can require a lot of memory in certain scenarios. In Encoder 3, we set the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE bit in the application’s PE header which enables 3GB of addressable memory on x86 systems (requires BCDEDIT /Set IncreaseUserVa 3072) and 4GB on x64 systems. For more information on this and how to configure an x86 system to take advantage of this feature, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906217.aspx and http://blogs.technet.com/brad_rutkowski/archive/2006/10/03/Hey-where-did-_2F00_3GB-go-in-Longhorn-and-Vista_3F00_.aspx
Removal of command-line encoder: One of the tough trade-offs we had to make for this release was what to do with the command-line. In Encoder 2 SP1 the command-line encoder was functionally behind what was possible in the UI and the Object Model. We also observed a lot of community support for specialized command-line alternatives such as WMCmd.vbs by Alex Zambelli. So, for Encoder 3 we took the difficult decision of removing the command-line encoder from the product. Instead we directed our energies into making the .NET Object Model full fidelity in order to give application developers the maximum API surface area possible, including support for Live encoding. To mitigate the decision, we are shipping working sample code in the box in the form of a Powershell cmdlet wrapper around the object model which provides basic Powershell-based command-line encoding supporting batch operations via the Powershell object pipeline:
Additionally, we are keen to work with the community to get an equivalent to WMCmd.vbs built and published on Codeplex to satisfy users who really want to automate encoder using cmd.exe rather than from Powershell or C#. We hope you agree that this was the right trade-off to make. If you have any opinions, positive or negative, please do send us your feedback.
We look forward to making the release available for download in the coming weeks and talking more about its capabilities. Stay tuned and, as ever, your feedback is welcome. The Expression Encoder Team.
Last week we released the Expression Encoder 2 SDK. Here's a little video of Charles and I, giving a quick introduction. Apologies for the rather close camera angle as Charles was just holding the camera with his left hand, and it didn't help that our makeup and wardrobe department was out that day.
You can get it from the following location.
Microsoft® Expression® Encoder 2 SDK
Please try it out and don't hesitate to send us your feedback.
When Encoder 3 is installed we now install the API help file, intellisense files and the sample projects, so you’re ready to go with the SDK as soon as Encoder is installed. You will find a SDK link on the start menu that will take you to the folder from where you can find the samples (in C# and Visual Basic) and the help CHM file.
I know a bunch of you have been waiting for this for a while now and you’ll be glad to see that V3 has full support for the Live mode of the application through the object model.
e.g.
// Create a new LiveJob to begin broadcasting this file. using (LiveJob job = new LiveJob()) { // Create a new file source from the file name we were passed in LiveFileSource fileSource = job.AddFileSource(@"C:\myvideo.wmv"); // Set this source to Loop when finished fileSource.PlaybackMode = FileSourcePlaybackMode.Loop; // Make this source the active one job.ActivateSource(fileSource); …
From the LiveJob object you can get a list of video and audio capture devices installed on the system and add them as sources as well. See the Microsoft.Expression.Encoder.Live namespace for further details and the new Live SDK sample that is installed.
In V3 we now have separate profile classes for each profile type. This way if you’re dealing with the Main H.264 video profile for instance you’ll just see the properties that pertain to that profile on the object. (Note that you need the full version of Encoder for H.264 support). Along with this you now specify the profiles within the OutputFormat property on the MediaItem.
Bitrate is specified by using one of the new bitrate classes, ConstantBitrate, VariableConstrainedBitrate, VariableUnconstrainedBitrate and VariableQualityBitrate. Again this is so that only the properties that make sense are exposed on the class. For example when using VariableConstrainedBitrate there is a PeakBitrate property but that property isn’t exposed on any of the other bitrate classes as it only applies to the variable constrained bitrate type.
MainVC1VideoProfile videoProfile = new MainVC1VideoProfile(); videoProfile.Bitrate = new ConstantBitrate(350); videoProfile.Complexity = VideoComplexity.Fastest; videoProfile.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(640, 480); MediaItem item = new MediaItem(@"C:\myvideo.wmv"); item.OutputFormat = new WindowsMediaOutputFormat() { VideoProfile = videoProfile };
The Encoder SDK supports encoding to the smooth streaming output format (when using the full version of Expression Encoder). The video profile class now has a streams property which is used to specify the details of each stream that you wish to encode. Smooth Streaming can be used when encoding to constant bitrate for VC-1 and H.264 and to variable constrained bitrate when using VC-1. Additionally when using VC-1 and variable constrained bitrate you can specify that the sizes of the streams should be automatically determined by the encoder based upon the content and the bitrate. In this case you specify the maximum width and height to use for each stream.
AdvancedVC1VideoProfile videoProfile = new AdvancedVC1VideoProfile(); // When you create a VideoProfile you'll get one stream by default. // In this example remove that one as we’re going to explicity // add the three streams below. videoProfile.Streams.RemoveAt(0); videoProfile.Streams.Add( new VariableConstrainedBitrate(1450, 1600), new System.Drawing.Size(800, 600)); videoProfile.Streams.Add( new VariableConstrainedBitrate(1050, 1600), new System.Drawing.Size(640, 480)); videoProfile.Streams.Add( new VariableConstrainedBitrate(600, 1600), new System.Drawing.Size(400, 300)); // Use smooth streaming with automatically sized streams. videoProfile.SmoothStreaming = true; videoProfile.Streams.AutoSize = true;
In V2 you could essentially combine up to three sources by using the leader, main video and trailer. In V3 you can move past this limit and combine multiple sources into one by using the new Source class.
MediaItem item = new MediaItem("mymovie1.wmv"); item.Sources.Add(new Source("mymovie2.wmv")); item.Sources.Add(new Source("mymovie3.avi")); item.Sources.Add(new Source("mymovie4.wmv"));
There are new classes to help analyze an existing media file to determine information about its video streams and audio streams (in case the file has more than one).
AudioVideoFile source = new AudioVideoFile("myvideo.wmv"); Console.WriteLine(source.VideoStreams[0].VideoSize); Console.WriteLine(source.VideoStreams[0].AspectRatio); Console.WriteLine(source.VideoStreams[0].Duration); Console.WriteLine(source.AudioStreams[0].Channels); Console.WriteLine(source.AudioStreams[0].SampleSize);
If the source file does have more than one audio stream you can now specify which stream is used when encoding by setting the AudioStreamIndex property on the Source object.
item.Sources[0].AudioStreamIndex = 2;
For all the standard presets that are installed with the application we have specified pre-defined static instances for each one to make it easier to use in case you don’t want to set all the properties of the profiles individually.
mediaItem.ApplyPreset(Presets.VC1HighSpeedBroadbandVBR);
If you look at the Presets Members in the SDK help file you’ll see all the options along with descriptions.
So there you have a quick introduction to some of the new changes and improvements to the Expression Encoder object model in version 3. You can check out the What’s New section in the SDK help file for further details and feel free to give us your feedback and ask questions either by adding a comment here or over in the Expression Encoder Forum
We are very pleased to announce that both Expression Studio 3 trial and Expression Encoder 3 are now available to download:
Encoder: here
Studio: here
In this release we have taken on board your feedback and simplified the product line. There are now two versions: Expression Encoder and Expression Encoder with IIS Smooth Streaming. We have retired the Express version and, instead, have made all the features in Expression Encoder available for free with no more 30 day limit.
So what do you get in Expression Encoder with IIS Smooth Streaming?
· CODECs (AC3 Decode, MPEG2/TS Decode, AVC-HD Decode, H.264 Encode, AAC-LC Encode/Decode)
· Unlimited Screen Capture (Expression Encoder can capture up to 10 minutes)
· IIS Smooth Streaming
Other than that, all functionality in the Expression Encoder is freely available with no time limit (Full VC-1 encode, Live encoding, Overlays, Screen Capture up to 10 minutes).
If you wish to obtain the fully licensed version of Expression Encoder with IIS Smooth Streaming, it is available in both of the Expression Studio 3 and Expression Web 3 SKUs as well as in the Expression Professional Subscription which can be ordered from the Microsoft Store or your favorite online retailer.
As previously mentioned, there will be a freely redistributable version of Expression Encoder 3 available in the future, that can be shipped as part of 3rd party applications.
I'm pleased to announced that we just pushed a preview of the SLS publishing plugin for Expression Encoder 2 live:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/2/a/22a8da23-ffa7-4e5a-8fed-8239d3a7b322/SLSPlugin for Expression Encoder 2.msi
This plugin makes it very easy to publish and manage your encoded Silverlight video experiences online via the Silverlight Streaming service from within the Expression Encoder application.
As well as adding support for Expression Encoder 2, the plugin has a number of enhancements:
Hope this helps,
James
A new service pack is now available for Expression Encoder 4, which includes over 300 bug fixes as well as these new features:
Support for Intel QSV GPU encoding (Pro only) – GPU-accelerated encoding has added support for the Intel HD Graphics GPU included in Sandy Bridge processors, in addition to the improved Nvidia CUDA support. You can use both of these devices when encoding for increased speed and performance. More information available here. QSV and Cuda performance reports are also available.
Support for 1 and 2-pass VBR for offline H.264 encodes (Pro only) – You can now select 1-pass VBR for MP4 encodes as well as both 1-pass and 2-pass VBR for H.264-based Smooth Streaming encodes.
Support for more AAC audio options (Pro only) – You can now choose multiple-channel audio along with more bitrate and sample rate options when you use the AAC codec.
Support for SRS audio encoding – You can now choose to enable SRS to convert an audio stream from multiple audio channels to two SRS 5.1 surround sound channels.
Manage publishing points from within Expression Encoder (Pro only) – In a Live Broadcasting Project, you can now create, restart or update publishing points on an IIS Smooth Streaming server. You can also choose to automatically update a broadcast’s EventID.
Live crop – You can now crop your live or file sources in a Live Broadcasting project.
Support for Windows Media Streaming MBR in a Live broadcast – You can now add multiple bitrate streams to your WM Streaming broadcast in a Live Broadcasting Project.
Support for Live H.264 VBR 1-pass (Pro only) – You can now select 1-pass VBR encoding for H.264-based Live Smooth Streaming encodes.
No Screen Capture limit – The 10-minute Screen Capture limit has been removed from Expression Encoder.
Follow mouse cursor – You can now enable the screen capture area to follow your mouse cursor in Screen Capture.
Template improvements – Offline playback of DRM content, SRS playback support, improved TTML support, audio volume on startup, auto-repeat, etc.
New SDK samples – Following your requests and suggestions, we added 5 C# and 6 VB.NET samples, including a thumbnail generator, a performance tool and a Live console application.
Let us know what you think! Thanks.
SP1 has just gone live here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A29BE9F9-29E1-4E70-BF67-02D87D3E556E&displaylang=en
In addition to the enhancements that are documented in this post, the update includes support for the authoring of IIS Smooth Streaming content.
Note that the authoring of both IIS Smooth Streaming and H.264 for devices are only available in the full product, not the trial. The remainder of the features such as audio overlays and WebDAV publishing are available both in the trial and the full product.
This post is an update to the previous Getting started with the Expression Encoder Object Model post, but updated to work with the RTM version of Expression Encoder V2 as the progress event handler changed a little from Beta to RTM.
(This post assume you’ve already installed Expression Encoder V2 available from here, and that you have Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 installed.)
First of all start Visual Studio and select File… New Project… You can choose which type of application you would prefer, like a WPF or Windows Forms application. For my test here, I’m just going to choose a Console Application. Give it a suitable name.
Go ahead and click OK.
Before you can start coding against the Expression Encoder object model you need to add references to the applicable assemblies. Select Project…Add Reference from the menu. When the dialog comes up you need to select
Microsoft.Expression.Encoder Microsoft.Expression.Encoder.Types Microsoft.Expression.Encoder.Utilites
and because some of our types derive from ObservableCollection you also need to select
WindowsBase.
You can select them one at a time or hold down CTRL and multi-select each one before clicking OK.
Now we're ready to do some coding.
To make it easier to pick up the Encoder classes let's first of all add a using statement. Just add the following near the top of the file where the other using statements are.
using Microsoft.Expression.Encoder;
One of the main classes that you'll end up dealing with in Expression Encoder is the MediaItem class. This allows you to find out information about a video or audio file and ultimately allow you to encode it. To create one of these you just pass the filename of the media file you want.to the constructor.
e.g. MediaItem mediaItem = new MediaItem(@"C:\input\video.avi");
Obviously, you'll change the filename to the one you want to use.
Once this has been created you'll be able to access a bunch of information about the file
e.g. FileDuration OriginalAspectRatio OriginalVideoSize
This is also the way you'll control how the video is encoded. If you type mediaItem followed by a "." you should trigger the Intellisense drop down which shows you all the properties and methods on this item. You should see a lot of properties that correspond to options in the UI of the main Encoder application. If you want Intellisense comments to appear and want to check out the help file, see this post.
For now we'll just use the defaults.
Before we can encode the file we need to create and add it to a Job.
This is simply done by the following statements.
Job job = new Job(); job.MediaItems.Add(mediaItem);
If you want to encode multiple files in the same job you can go ahead and create multiple MediaItem's and add them to the job.
Before you encode you need to set the directory where the output will go. This is done by setting the OutputDirectory property.
job.OutputDirectory = @"C:\output";
By default Expression Encoder will create output in sub folders named using the Job Id. These will be something along the lines of your machine name followed by the current date and time, e.g. "DEAN 4-21-2008 11.00.47 PM".
You can turn this feature off by setting the CreateSubfolder property.
job.CreateSubfolder = false;
Then the output will be created in the output directory directly.
For the simplest case, that’s all you need before encoding the job. This is done by just calling the Encode method.
job.Encode();
Putting it all together your program should look something like this.
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Expression.Encoder; namespace MyEncoderApplication { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { MediaItem mediaItem = new MediaItem(@"C:\input\video.avi"); // Create a job and the media item for the video we wish // to encode. Job job = new Job(); job.MediaItems.Add(mediaItem);
// Set the output directory and encode job.OutputDirectory = @"C:\output"; job.Encode(); } } }
Now you should be able to compile and run the application. After it's finished running, you should have the encoded output file underneath the output directory. It should have a filename that matches the original, but with a .wmv file extension.
If you run the application and it crashes, then that is probably because an exception was thrown that is not currently being caught. For example if your MediaItem points to a file that doesn't exist or isn't a valid media file, you will see that an InvalidMediaFileException is thrown. You can then run it under the debugger to get more details.
Assuming everything worked OK then for your next step you'll probably want to show some progress during the encode. First of all you need to a add a progress event handler function. Something like the following
static void OnProgress(object sender, EncodeProgressEventArgs e) { Console.WriteLine(e.Progress); }
Obviously here we're just dumping the progress to the screen on each line. If you were writing a GUI app you would probably update a progress bar or something similar.
To tell Encoder to call this function you need the following line when you're creating the job.
job.EncodeProgress += new EventHandler<EncodeProgressEventArgs>(OnProgress);
Now you’re code should look something like the following.
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Expression.Encoder; namespace MyEncoderApplication { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { MediaItem mediaItem = new MediaItem(@"C:\input\video.avi"); // Create a job and the media item for the video we wish // to encode. Job job = new Job(); job.MediaItems.Add(mediaItem); // Set up the progress callback function job.EncodeProgress += new EventHandler<EncodeProgressEventArgs>(OnProgress); // Set the output directory and encode. job.OutputDirectory = @"C:\output"; job.Encode(); } static void OnProgress(object sender, EncodeProgressEventArgs e) { Console.WriteLine(e.Progress); } } }
When you compile and run the application you should now see a bunch of numeric values going to 100, something like the following.
That’s it for a basic encoding app. From here you can now try experimenting with various properties on the MediaItem. For example, if you want to try tweaking the output profile, you can look at this post – Changing the output profile.
Note that if you’re running a 64-bit OS then you may also need to change your Target Platform within Visual Studio from “Any CPU” to "x86” as Expression Encoder is 32-bit.
Charles and I presented our Session at MIX08 on Expression Encoder 2 this morning. It went reasonably well. With luck the video should appear here shortly. We'll re-publish it on the blog sometime next week.
We also have a couple of other MIX videos to publish soon. In the meantime, here are some pix that David shot:
Today we are announcing:
As part of the announcement we will be shipping support for IIS Smooth Streaming in Expression Encoder 2 SP1 including the ability to simultaneously encode to multiple bitrates required to enable an adaptive streaming scheme, support for outputting to the new file format as well as support for the format in our Silverlight 2 player skins.
In simple terms, adaptive streaming is an approach that enables video playback to adapt, in real time, to changing network conditions and PC load and be able to offer the appropriate bitrate at any particular instant. The IIS Smooth Streaming implementation offers various optimizations that make deployment and management of such a scheme simpler and more cost effective. IIS Smooth Streaming will be an upcoming feature of the IIS Media Pack.
Expression Encoder 2 SP1 will be available real soon now.. when it drops, we’ll be following up with more info on the new features and how to create IIS Smooth Streaming content. In the meantime you can check out the demos over at http://www.smoothHD.com.
A XAML overlay is a vector-based graphic that is rendered into the users video like a lower third, a logo bug, etc... XAML is Extensible Application Markup Language and is a declarative XML-based language created by Microsoft which is used to initialize structured values and objects. Below are examples of XAML overlays.
The goal of the this walk through is to allow you to be able to understand how to get your XAML design from Expression Design into Expression Encoder.
To create a XAML overlay start by creating your graphic in Microsoft Expression Design or importing a design into Microsoft Expression Design.
After finishing your design you need to make the XAML overlay you created digestible by Microsoft Expression Blend (if you want to animate it) by completing the following steps using Microsoft Expression Design.
Select All
File>Export
Export as XAML WPF Canvas(Take note of where you save this file)
Silverlight XAML is not supported
At this point you can use the XAML overlay as a static graphic overlay in Microsoft Expression Encoder.
If you wish to animate the overlay follow these instructions.
Open Microsoft Expression Blend
Create a new project a WPF Application (.exe)
In the project panel right click on csproj file and Link to Existing Item…
Navigate to the XAML file you created in Microsoft Expression Design and Double click on the XAML file in the project tab
This will open up the XAML file that you created in Microsoft Expression Design and open it in Microsoft Expression Blend.
At this point you should be able to animate the XAML.
Add a new storyboard then add your animation key frames to create your animation.
Then navigate to the file menu and select save and your animated XAML overlay is ready for Microsoft Expression Encoder.
In Microsoft Expression Encoder add overlay and navigate to original Microsoft Expression Design XAML file from design and add this file as an overlay. After adding the overlay you can customize length visible, fade in, and fade out. On the video window you can scale the graphic and place it in the desired position. Since it is vector-based, the quality of text and graphical elements will be maintained.
We’ve just released an update to the SDK, which now incorporates the new features in Expression Encoder 2 Service Pack 1.
Here are the main things that are new in the SDK :-
A new Mode property, EncoderSku, which gives more accurate SKU information than Mode.IsExpress.
A new MediaItem property, FileOutputMode, which you can use to select ASF MBR as well as "Adaptive Smooth Streaming" output modes.
Enhancements to how output files are generated and accessed.
New audio overlay functionality for MediaItem.
Two new AAC base profiles for AudioProfiles.
Two new H.264 base profiles for VideoProfiles.
A new AdaptiveStreaming profile for both AudioProfiles and VideoProfiles.
A new VideoProfile profile, VideoProfileMbrDeltaCollection, which you can use to customize MBR and/or AdaptiveStreaming output streams.
A new default resize mode of SuperSampling instead of Bicubic.
Here’s the link to download the updated SDK.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9A077A3D-58CE-454C-B486-153F0578BE4A&displaylang=en
We have just made available a new option that allows users to purchase the full version of Expression Encoder as a standalone product. To recap what this means, let’s start with the free version of Expression Encoder. This is available from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b6c8015b-e5de-46c0-98cd-1be12eef89a8&displaylang=en
and contains the full feature set of the product with the following limitations:
Screen capture up to 10 minutes No Smooth Streaming output The following CODECs are not present: AC3 Decoder, MPEG2/TS Decoder, AVC-HD Decoder, H.264 Encoder, AAC-LC Encoder/Encoder
(Note.. the installer is currently miss-labeled as Encoder_Trial_en.exe but is, in fact fully featured bar the above list and also not time-bombed as in previous versions.)
If you try and access these features you’ll get the following message:
As of today, the purchase link now points to a new Microsoft Store page where you can get an Expression Encoder 3 license for $49:
Expression Encoder 3 is still available as part of Expression Studio 3, Expression Web 3 as well as through the Expression Professional Subscription and MSDN programs.
We've just released an update to Expression Encoder 2 that allows VB.NET developers to build solutions using the Expression Encoder 2 SDK.
You can get the update here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8727DD51-61B3-4692-ABDE-4FDD2779B0D0&displaylang=en
The cool part is that the update is only required on developer machines. Any apps created in VB.NET on a machine with the fix will run against the unmodified Expression Encoder 2 release bits.
(UPDATE: This post was written against the Beta of Expression Encoder v2. Now that the RTM version is out we recommend that you install that version and check out the RTM version of this post instead)
(This post assume you’ve already installed Expression Encoder Beta 2 available from here, and that you have Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 installed.)
This is also the way you'll control how the video is encoded. If you type mediaItem followed by a "." you should trigger the Intellisense drop down which shows you all the properties and methods on this item. You should see a lot of properties that correspond to options in the UI of the main Encoder application.
static void OnProgress(objectsender, PublishProgressEventArgs e) { Console.WriteLine(e.Progress); }
job.PublishProgress += new EventHandler<PublishProgressEventArgs>(OnProgress);
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Expression.Encoder; namespace MyEncoderApplication { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { MediaItem mediaItem = new MediaItem(@"C:\input\video.avi"); // Create a job and the media item for the video we wish // to encode. Job job = new Job(); job.MediaItems.Add(mediaItem); // Set up the progress callback function job.PublishProgress += new EventHandler<PublishProgressEventArgs>(OnProgress); // Set the output directory and encode. job.OutputDirectory = @"C:\output"; job.Encode(); } static void OnProgress(object sender, PublishProgressEventArgs e) { Console.WriteLine(e.Progress); } } }
UPDATE: If you’re running a 64-bit OS then you may also need to change your Target Platform within Visual Studio from “Any CPU” to "x86” as Expression Encoder is 32-bit.
Now that Expression Encoder 2 has been released, the team is hard at work on the next version of the product. We want to be as responsive to community feedback as possible, and would like to set up a panel of customers with whom we can have ongoing conversations.
The Customer Panel is a way for us to build strong relationships with users of our product. We'll use it as a way to understand your needs, workflows as well as how you use the product. We'll also use it to float future feature ideas and get feedback on them
The Customer Panel is an ongoing project. The overall impact should be minimal and if at any point you no longer want to participate, just tell us. Typically we'll aim to reach out the Panel every couple of months or so. There may some times when we reach out more frequently.
TAPs are for specific releases and focus on getting you pre-releases of the software to play with. We'll use the same framework for the Customer Panel, but it is longer lived and goes beyond a particular release. This is an opportunity to have lasting impact on product direction.
If you want to take part, please send me an email by clicking here.
A QFE has been released for Expression Encoder v3. The download can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3fa77346-6838-4963-9561-ad6ea7b62fbb
The QFE contains a significant number of fixes and enhancements including:
· The Audio panel now appears when the user selects two or more media files in the Media Content panel.
· You can now read or write to MP4 files of 4 GB or greater size.
· Audio recordings created using certain USB microphones no longer contain distortion.
· You can successfully encode to MP4 CBR when the bitrate is set to 4.
· Substantial drops in playback bit rates no longer occur during CPU spikes while playing smooth streaming content.
· Smooth Streaming content no longer stutters after 10 or more minutes of full-screen playback in some scenarios.
· Playback of Smooth Streaming content encoded with the VC1 Smooth Streaming 720P VBR preset has been improved.
· You no longer receive an error when repeatedly editing a Silverlight template in Expression Blend 3 using the Edit the template in Expression Blend command.
· You no longer receive an error when playing back Smooth Streaming content from a server that is different from the one where the Silverlight template resides.
· Performance has been improved in the Black Glass template.
· In Live Encoding mode, you can now publish to a publishing point that requires authentication.
· Expression Encoder now includes support for AVC1 files.
· You can now compile the PowerShell code sample from the Expression Encoder SDK when working in Windows 7.
· Running Expression Encoder as a SYSTEM level service no longer causes an exception.
· The Silverlight player no longer crashes when you load a file containing unsupported East Asian characters. You will receive an error message, however, if the player does not support the characters.
· You will now be able to select Adaptive GOP and Closed GOP in the VC-1 Settings options when you have chosen VC-1 Main as your video codec.
· Expression Encoder will now use its native MP4 codec to decode MP4 files, instead of using QuickTime.
· Fixes have been made to better support importing and editing Smooth Streaming files.
· The Expression Encoder Timeline will now display the proper length of imported AVCHD files.
· Playlists and chapters now correctly display when performing offline playback.
· Imported WTV files now play back correctly.
· Seeking has been improved during playback of Smooth Streaming files.
· If you choose the VC-1 Simple profile for encoding, the bitrate in the Video category will now correctly switch to one is valid for the Simple profile.
Today we have released a service pack for Expression Encoder 4 that includes some new features and a bunch of bug fixes. Here is a list of the new features we have added:
Check it out and let us know what you think! Thanks
Jamie
We have updated our build on the download center to resolve a couple of issues related to the screen capture application. Some machines with Expresion Encoder 4 Pro were incorrectly limiting the screen capture time limit and we had an issue with XESC files being played back in the Windows Media Player on 64-bit Vista and Windows Server 2008. In order to upgrade, simply grab the newest version of the free Encoder (available here) and install over the current one. The version number will go from 4.0.1639.0 to 4.0.1651.0. Note that there is no need to uninstall the older version, setup will upgrade it for you. Please also take note that those international versions already have the fixes mentioned above, so there is no need to upgrade them.
In order to upgrade, simply grab the newest version of the free Encoder (available here) and install over the current one. The version number will go from 4.0.1639.0 to 4.0.1651.0. Note that there is no need to uninstall the older version, setup will upgrade it for you. Please also take note that those international versions already have the fixes mentioned above, so there is no need to upgrade them.
To allow the encoded files to playback seamlessly in most environments, including when streamed on a wireless network, the XBox 360 preset uses a bandwidth of 4Mbps while preserving the video frame size of the original file. This is fine for standard definition content however will produce mediocre output for 720p sources and will be even worse for 1080p content. Because of that, I would advise tweaking the video bitrate to your specific needs. So, if network speed isn't an issue, I would personally recommend changing the video bitrate to something like 6-7Mbps for 720p content or 8-10Mbps for 1080p content, which is still within the Xbox360 supported limits for VC-1 decoding.
Finally, it's important to note that the Advanced VC-1 video profile is not supported by the Xbox360 (nor the PS3 through Media Connect), so it's probably best to leave it as "VC-1 Main", like the XBox 360 Preset does.
Charles and I have arrived here at The Venetian ready for Mix08.
Our session is currently blacklisted but should appear here shortly:
http://sessions.visitmix.com/
If you are attending and want to meet up with us, do send email.
Need to test that image uploading is working so here is a view from my window:
An updated version of the FAQ is available on our forum here.