Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

jamiet — Wed, 09 May 2007 07:03:22 GMT

That's all well and good Danny but tell us something interesting. When is Windows Live gonna incoporate Silverlight? :)

-Jamie

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

dthorpe — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:49:51 GMT

jamiet: Well, first off, Windows Live is providing the Silverlight Streaming service, so we're already in the thick of it. As for the Windows Live Controls and data APIs, why do you think I'm puttering around in Silverlight? :P The first thing I need to do is figure out an equivalent cross-domain communication technique to use within Silverlight.

Thanks for the feedback!

-Danny

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

chad.campbell — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:40:14 GMT

Thank you for putting this toghether! This pretty helpful!

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

erik.arvidsson — Sun, 13 May 2007 00:37:30 GMT

Hi Danny,

I hope MS is treating you well.

4 files! Seriously, you can get away with 2 (your js and the xaml) but is there a way to skip the XAML file? I have a scenario where I have an empty Canvas element and I don't want to pay the high price of an extra HTTP request. Is there a way to tell the plugin to use an empty Canvas, just like about:blank in DHTML?

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

dthorpe — Sun, 13 May 2007 03:54:41 GMT

Hi Erik! Long time no see.

I don't know offhand if Silverlight can be fired up without a XAML file. I'd suggest digging into the <object> tag generated by the CreateSilverlight call in Silverlight.js to see how construction works on the inside and possibly route around the .xaml assumption. From what I know of <object> tags, the object tag is what creates an instance of the Silverlight object, not the XAML, so it seems like it should be possible to do what you're looking for.

I balked at the number of files required for a minimum app, too, but backed off when I found out that one of the reasons for putting the object tag creation in a separate .js file was to avoid "Click to Activate" that most of the browsers now implement.

-Danny

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

timheuer — Tue, 15 May 2007 06:55:41 GMT

I've been blogging my experiences with streaming services as well at http://timheuer.com/blog/Tags/silverlight%20streaming/default.aspx

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:57:07 GMT

Answering Erik:

You can store XAML in a <script> block in your HTML and point the Silverlight component at that. That way you don't have another round trip for a 'blank' component.

Laurence

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

Jocker — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:06:28 GMT

to the author: the code listing for test1.xaml misses the double quotes on the first line :)

obliviously it should be <Canvas xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"

apart of this, great tutorial!

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

dthorpe — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:04:29 GMT

Jocker: Nice catch! "Helpful" software goes a little overboard sometimes in trying to make URLs into links. Fixed. Thanks!

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

jawrat — Mon, 28 May 2007 19:26:05 GMT

thanks for the walkthrough. it helped me understand a few more pieces of the silverlight puzzle.

my question is thus: what if i'm not worried about bandwidth and such and have my own server infrastructure that I want to leverage to serve silverlight content (streaming video/etc)? Is this possible? I've been banging around with it for a little bit but keep coming back to the same answer...use silverlight.live.com. My client isn't interested in putting his content anywhere but his own servers so it's not really an option. in short, how can we host our own silverlight content??

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

dthorpe — Tue, 29 May 2007 09:59:08 GMT

jawrat:

Yes, you can certainly host Silverlight content on your own server infrastructure. Just ignore everything labelled "Silverlight Streaming" and put your XAML and video content up on your own servers!

XAML and your managed DLLs can be served by a plain old HTTP web server with the appropriate content-type configurations; the video content probably needs special treatment (Windows Media Server?) rather than an http file server, but I'm making a guess on that one. If I'm way off, holler and I'll go track down something with more truth than guess.

Video addressed with http:// is downloaded by Silverlight as progressive video; mms:// is streaming video.

Silverlight's video streaming capabilities are not restricted to the Silverlight Streaming service; rather, Silverlight Streaming is an incubation ground for Silverlight rich media apps for developers who don't have the server resources to host rich media for a potentially large audience.

If you have your own server infrastructure capable of handling rich media bandwidth demands, please use your own! :P

Thanks for the feedback! We should write up an article on this topic (how to build your own Silverlight media server) since this isn't the first time I've heard this question.

-Danny

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

jawrat — Tue, 29 May 2007 20:33:49 GMT

thanks for the swift reply!

ah, but for some reason (probably my own lack of knowledge) changing out http:// with mms:// (the files are there, they work fine in wmp and vlc) doesn't work. silverlight complains about not being able to read the file. perhaps it's not as simple as swapping out the file calls?

by the way, i'm playing with both the 1.0 and 1.1 VideoLibrary samples just to see what we can do as that's pretty much what my client wants to do. if you have any ideas, i'm open to suggestions.

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

dthorpe — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:45:44 GMT

jawrat:

Ok, I'll inquire further! Thanks for the feedback.

-Danny

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

dthorpe — Wed, 30 May 2007 01:57:31 GMT

jawrat:

Confirmed. Silverlight will play video hosted by your own web server. The video file needs to in .wmv format, and it needs to be encoded using a codec and bitrate that Silverlight supports.

Your best bet is to use Expression Media to encode your video content into a Silverlight-compatible .wmv file. Expression will spit out a bunch of files which can just be copied to your web server, including a test page that plays the video.

Have fun!

-Danny

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

jawrat — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:13:41 GMT

okay, so I solved the issue with streaming...apparently, according to http://silverlight.net/forums/t/586.aspx

"For streaming, Silverlight only supports http as the streaming protocol, it will not do the actual mms or rstp protocol. In the beta we differentiate between streaming and progressive download by the mms:// vs http:// monikers. This will be addressed for RTM, while we will try progressive and streaming for both, http:// will try progressive first and mms:// will try streaming first, therefore is you keep these monikers as hints to the client, you will get better perf."

So, since I had a webserver running on the same machine, I had to use a different port number (8080), and then mms://domain:port/path worked. So, that's one issue resolved. Now, on to the UI and automation.

Thanks for your help/hints/advice/info.

-J

Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming Nuts and Bolts

Bob's Blog — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:24:19 GMT

Danny Thorpe has a great post on how to get your Silverlight applications working with the Silverlight

re: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

angeldrift — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:21:53 GMT

@jawrat do you have a "how to" guide somewhere that shows how you made it work? Thanks!

How to: Hello World with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming

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