David Sayed's Microsoft Blog : expression media 2

Demonstration von Expression Media in Deutsch

dsayed — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:01:10 GMT

At Photokina, we were lucky enough to have a local Expression Media fan who spent pretty much the entire week of his own time demoing Expression Media at our booth. Wolfgang works for Microsoft in Germany, but does not actually work on the product itself! Below is a snippet of him demoing Expression Media in German. I wish the video were longer, but unfortunately trade show internet connectivity being what it is, we lost it at the critical moment of demoing Virtual Earth integration.

(note that I wasn’t dumb enough to leave the German translation of the title to an automated translation service, or I would have ended up with Demonstration der Meinungsfreiheit Medien in Deutsch…)

Office 2008 for Mac at Photokina

dsayed — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:25:17 GMT

I spent some time with the Mac Office guys at Photokina who were showing the Special Media Edition version of the product, which includes Expression Media. Below is a video that shows Mac users some of the cool things they can do when they use Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition to manage and create documents.

Be sure to check out the split screen action as Mike shows how you can easily compose documents by dragging and dropping visual and content assets from Expression Media into Word and PowerPoint!

Expression Media 2 Service Pack 1 is here

dsayed — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:03:00 GMT

Expression Media 2 SP1 is now available. If you are a Windows user and have opted to receive updates for other applications besides Windows, you should be offered the download next time Windows Update runs. If you wish to download the update manually, you may do so here.

The Mac version is available for download here and ~~will become~~ is now available through Microsoft AutoUpdate that is installed with Expression Media 2 or with Microsoft Office on the Mac.

The release notes telling you what’s new are below, but if you’re an Expression Media 2 user, I would highly recommend this release.

Overview

Expression Media 2 SP1 provides the latest updates to Microsoft Expression Media Version 2. Expression Media 2 SP1 has taken the customer feedback from the Expression Media 2 release and the goal of driving both stability and quality to a new level.
To achieve this goal the team fixed over 400 bugs in SP1 and added the following improvements to the Expression Media 2 product by feature:

Hierarchical Keywords

Child nodes are removed automatically when the parent node is removed.
The interaction between hierarchical keywords and flat list keywords is improved.
The drag behavior between a parent node and a child node is improved.

Geo-tagging/Virtual Earth

Drag-and-drop capabilities have been added to the Virtual Earth window.
Keywords display when you drag an image to a Virtual Earth window.
The GPS annotation field is now user editable.
GPS locations can be sniffed from URLs with embedded Lat/Long info.
More latitude and longitude formats have been added.
Latitude and longitude tags can be added for display in HTML galleries.

Raw Image support

You can now catalog and manage media that is shared on a network by using Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV).

Info Panel

The template event data can be saved correctly.
Author details can be displayed correctly.
The annotated date can be displayed correctly when you import .nef files.

Catalog Editing

Long paths and long file names are supported when paths are reset.
Unexpected duplicates are no longer created.
Expression Media now remembers the last used open location.
Catalog finder shows the full paths of image files.

Import

Large files, such as 16000x8000 images, are now supported in HTML galleries.
Rendering performance for the Nikon .nef files is improved.
.arw files display the Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) data.
Issues related to imports from camera disks are fixed.

Light Table

Multi-item drawing issues are fixed.
The behavior of the delete button has changed.
The position of the magnifier pointer is fixed.
Keyboard shortcut issues are resolved.
The user experience when switching between full-screen and windowed mode is improved.

In application help

More than 50 updates to help contents.

Action Log and Error reporting

More useful feedback has been added when some tasks cannot be completed.

Date Finder

The Date Finder in the Organize panel now enables navigation by month, year, and day.

Reading Annotations on Import

An intermittent problem in which only some imported files had the correct Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) annotations is fixed.

Long file names and file names with extended characters

Several problems with Unicode and truncated file names have been fixed. For example, issues with displaying or resolving those file names have been fixed.

File Info Panel for Adobe Applications

The Windows version now installs the Expression Media File Info Panel for use with Adobe applications, including Photoshop

Exchangeable Image File (EXIF)

Several problems that occur when you import or export EXIF metadata are fixed. For example, when you import Canon or Sony raw images, incorrect EXIF information may be generated.

Color Profiles

A problem in which some color profiles may be reported incorrectly is fixed. For example, the color matching of Nikon .nef images in some circumstances is improved.

Export to Movie Maker

Export to Movie Maker is now supported regardless of whether Quicktime is installed. Removed option to password protect a catalog

Catalog Passwords

Earlier versions of Expression Media and iView MediaPro included the password option to protect a catalog. This option was removed to encourage users to use a more secure method for protecting personal information. For more information, see the Expression Media Help.

Setting up at Photokina

dsayed — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:41:02 GMT

Some of you know what goes into making a trade show happen. For those who don't, the day before the show opens can be crazy: making sure that everything works while the booth is getting built around you. Here are some behind the scenes photos.

Photokina

dsayed — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:35:17 GMT

This week, I'm at Photokina with a large number of Microsoft people. If you're around, come and see us in Hall 0.41 Stand H049 G031.

We have lots of interesting things being shown including Expression Media 2 Service Pack 1, Photosynth, Microsoft Pro Photo Tools, Office 2008 Special Media Edition and Capture One by Phase One. There are continuous theatre presentations in both German and English and Peter Krogh of The DAM Book fame will be presenting integrated workflow with Capture One and Expression Media. Miss Aniela aka Natalie Dybisz is also on hand and will be talking about her workflow and production techniques.

iView/Expression Media London Meet-up

dsayed — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:11:22 GMT

Some of the Expression Media team will be in the UK the week of September 15th just before Photokina. I’ll be there to attend REMIX 08 in Brighton and am thinking about organising an informal meet up for iView and Expression Media users.

If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll set one up. So in order to gauge interest, possible dates and a venue, please complete the survey here.

Unfortunately, I didn't receive enough responses to make this worthwhile. Fpr those of you who were interested, sorry!

Thanks!

Expression Media is Going to Photokina

dsayed — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:28:36 GMT

Expression Media will be represented at Photokina in Cologne, Germany from September 23rd to 28th. We’ll be there together with the Rich Media Group. If you’re attending, stop by Hall 04.1 Stand H049 G031 and say hello.

Also, let me know if you have any interest in having a user meeting at the event. If enough people are interested, I can look at setting something up.

Tchüss!

Expression Media at the ProPhoto Summit

dsayed — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:06:06 GMT

Some of the Expression Media team did an impromptu lunch session at the Microsoft ProPhoto Summit yesterday. We had about 30 people come in throughout our 90 minute slot during lunch. Kevin Bier, our illustrious Product Unit Manager, MCed the whole thing and introduced the program management, test and dev members of the team. While most of the attendees were existing iView MediaPro or Expression Media users, there were some folks who were new to the whole thing.

Washington DC-based photographer John Harrington, who writes the Photo Business News and Forum blog, gave us a nice mention.

Silverlight Galleries in Expression Media 2

dsayed — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:50:07 GMT

Expression Media 2 features support for creating Silverlight web galleries, which means interactive galleries rather than plain, boring, static HTML, which after all is so 1999. Apart from being animated, fluid and cool, Silverlight galleries are useful too since they make the gallery experience more like a real application rather than a website.

My colleague Felix created this feature and will be writing up how to edit a Silverlight gallery template using Expression Blend. For now though, he's posted a sample Silverlight gallery in the Expression Media forum.