Jit Ghosh's WebLog

TimeCode Ranges from Windows Media Metadata

2009-11-14T19:46:23Z

As a follow up to my previous post , I have updated the code to add the ability to extract SMPTE timecode ranges. The WMMetadataReader class (in WMMetadataReader.h) now has a public method like below: System::Collections::Generic::List<SMPTETimeCodeRange^>^ GetSMPTERanges(String^ FilePath, int StreamIndex); This allows you to explicitly get the time code ranges, for a specific video stream in a WMV file. If you want all the metadata, the GetStreamMetadata() method on the...(read more)

2nd Edition of our Silverlight Recipes book is now available…

2009-11-14T17:36:50Z

Rob and I worked hard on updating this for SL 3. If you do happen to purchase it, please let us know if you like the format, the topics and any thoughts on how we can improve. We are about to start early work on the next edition for Silverlight 4 – your feedback will be highly appreciated. Enjoy!!...(read more)

Windows Media Metadata in Managed Code (and by extension - Silverlight)

2009-11-08T00:34:00Z

I have encountered several inquiries about accessing the metadata embedded in Windows Media file headers from Silverlight. Unfortunately Silverlight does not expose this information out of the box. The only way you can access this is by utilizing the Windows Media Format SDK. The Format SDK exposes its functionality in COM and requires you to write your code in C++. The nice thing about Visual C++, is that the C++ compiler allows you to author mixed mode assemblies i.e. one assembly containing both...(read more)

IIS Media Services 3.0 Released!!

2009-10-13T13:56:12Z

The IIS Media Services team just released the IIS Media Services 3.0 suite of technologies. This is pretty big release for us – with Live Smooth Streaming possibly being the coolest part of it. If you are watching the NBC Sunday Night Football on the web, then you have seen Live Smooth Streaming in action. You you have not – you must check it out here . To install and try out IIS Media Services 3.0 , download it via the Web Platform Installer here . So what’s in IIS Media Services 3.0 ? Smooth Streaming...(read more)

Silverlight 3 is now officially released!!

2009-07-10T20:25:49Z

WooHoo!! Go read more about it in Scott’s blog here . I will be positing my own experiences and thoughts in the coming days. Learn more and download at http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ Enjoy!!...(read more)

Architect Council Webcasts

2009-05-27T04:50:11Z

The Microsoft Patterns & Practices team, in collaboration with members of the Microsoft Developer Evangelism team (my uber team that is) is putting together a series of webcasts titled “Pragmatic Patterns for Architects” . I would vote “must attend” for these. Below are more details: ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects “Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc. We’ve all heard this type of proclamations...(read more)

MTV & Silverlight 3 at NAB 2009

2009-04-28T01:37:02Z

NAB 2009 rocked !! It was exhausting working the booth, standing on my feet all day, talking to so many people over the course of four days, but it was so exciting at the same time. We showed many cool things at the Microsoft booth, including Silverlight 3, IIS 7 Smooth Streaming, our Fast search engine, our Advertising solutions, a ton of solutions from our partners, and last but not the least – some very interesting open source starter kits that my team built, and that I will blog about in coming...(read more)

Binding an embedded image using a value converter

2008-10-25T07:52:35Z

Recently I needed to bind some embedded images to data templates. If you look at the Image type in Silverlight 2, you will see that it exposes a Source property of type ImageSource that can be set to the URI of an image either relative to the XAP, or in its absolute form. If the URI is valid, the image stream is opened and read at runtime, an underlying BitmapImage is created around the stream and is then fed into Image.Source (BitmapImage derives from ImageSource). However this is all great when...(read more)

Open position in our team..

2008-10-18T21:14:39Z

Our team (Developer & Platform Evangelism for Communications, Media & Entertainment) is looking to hire a person in the role of a Platform Strategy Advisor. A PSA is a very exciting, highly visible, and influential role within the team and the company. In the words of the hiring manager, below is a description of the job role: The PSA role is a combination of business development and technical advisory. PSA's are tasked with creating deals that will drive large scale, early adoption of Microsoft...(read more)

Back to blogging - my book and other news…

2008-09-27T19:29:11Z

I have been inconspicuously absent on blogosphere for a while now. For my handful readers – I hope you missed me :-). I am back to blogging and hope to put out some more interesting stuff for you guys in the coming weeks. First for exciting news. We are close, very close to finishing up Silverlight 2. The product team just made the first release candidate available, and you can download it here . You can read more about the release in Scott Guthrie’s blog post here . We also just announced the first...(read more)

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is now available !!

2008-06-07T06:08:00Z

Woo - Hoo!! Navigate over to http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ to download the freshly minted beta 2 bits including the runtime, the SDK, and the Visual Studio 2008 tools for Silverlight 2 development. There is also a brand new version of Blend 2.5 preview and a new version of the Deep Zoom Composer available for download as well. I have been quite busy working on several large customer projects that involve Silverlight 2 Beta 2. In the coming weeks do visit here to find more tid-bits about SL 2...(read more)

Broken link to attachment fixed for previous post

2008-03-30T07:18:00Z

Sone folks pointed that the code sample attachment in my previous post on the Async Multiple File Upload Control for Silverlight 2 was broken. I have fixed it in the post as well provided a link below to the code on my Windows Live SkyDrive. http://cid-60bb739cbf5d117b.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/MultiFileUpload/MultiFileUpload.zip Sorry for the incovinience....(read more)

Async Multi File Upload Control with Metadata support for Silverlight 2 (Beta 1)

2008-03-28T07:43:00Z

By now a lot of you must be having a lot of fun of Silverlight 2 Beta 1. If you have not downloaded, installed and played with SL 2 Beta 1, I urge you do it right away - you are missing out!!! You can download SL2 here . I have been working on a number of projects that are using the Silverlight 2 beta bits, and several of them needed file upload functionality. I looked around, and found a few controls, but while all of them did certain things admirably well, there were a few things missing. A few...(read more)

Slides and Demos from Developer Days, March 13th in New York

2008-03-17T18:22:15Z

I recently gave two presentations at one of our events in New York - one on WPF and one on Silverlight 2. A lot of folks asked me to make the slide decks and the code demos available. So here they are (zipped) - you can download them from my Windows Live SkyDrive below. Feel free to ping me if you have questions. Sorry for being tardy in getting this done. Click the icon above to download Enjoy!!...(read more)

WPF based Music CD Ripper

2008-01-03T04:13:00Z

One of the WPF based projects I am working on right now needs some functionality to enable ripping music CD's a la Windows Media Player. I was digging into the various Windows Media SDK's as well as the Media Foundation stuff in Windows Vista to find the best way to achieve this - and it turns out the easiest is to rely on Windows Media Player itself. WMP exposes all of this via COM - so all you need to do is add a reference to the appropriate typelib, and off you go. Probably not the best solution,...(read more)