Messages from your Expression Media Support Team

Where Can I Download Expression Media?

jmckinn — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:02:55 GMT

I have had several of you ask where the Expression Media download packages are. I am providing the links below for your reference.

Expression Media Version 1:

Windows:
(Expression Media Post-SP1 Rollup for Microsoft Windows 1.0.9058.0)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cce477e8-6a2e-4d40-8609-0a976e8b645f

NOTE: This package will install on a clean machine or upgrade a previous version of Expression Media Version 1 for Windows

Macintosh:
(Expression Media Post-SP1 Rollup for Macintosh 1.0.9058.0)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=eab20be5-785e-45b9-97b8-9172af5ee0c5

NOTE: This package will install on a clean machine or upgrade a previous version of Expression Media Version 1 for Macintosh

Expression Media 2:

Windows:
(Original Released Version 2.0.1477.0)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CD359E7D-FD27-4901-BAFF-6D564CFBD700&displaylang=en

(SP1 Patch 2.0.1631.0 ***This patch requires the 2.0.1477.0 package to be installed first)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9440796E-6860-4586-948B-CCE2656AB811&displaylang=en

(SP2 Patch 2.0.2096.0 ***This patch requires the 2.0.1631.0 SP1 package to be installed first)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=52F05135-13B0-4F40-A9FF-77229822B0E3&displaylang=en

Macintosh:
(SP2 2.0.2096.0 package)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bb6aa4e5-1101-4116-9513-030679a14b77&displaylang=en

NOTE: This package will install on a clean machine or upgrade a previous version of Expression Media 2 for Macintosh

Known Issues on Windows 7 & Snow Leopard

jmckinn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:59:49 GMT

Hello Expression Media 2 users. It’s been awhile since we’ve posted on here. Recently, we’ve had reports of some issues using Expression Media 2 on Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. Below, you’ll find the issues we’re tracking along with some possible workarounds for some of these issues.

Windows 7

Expression Media 2 crashes when navigating folders in the "Open” dialog. This problem appears to only affect the 32-bit version of Windows 7. There is a workaround. Go into the properties of the Microsoft Expression 2 shortcut that you use to open Expression Media 2. On the “Compatibility” tab, check the box next to “Disable visual themes” and click OK.
Export Slide Show to Movie Maker in Expression Media 2 doesn’t launch Movie Maker. When using this feature, it will prompt for a file location and create an XML file. Movie Maker can be added to Windows 7 from Windows Live Essentials but it will not open automatically from Expression Media 2.

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Nikon NEF RAW images do not render when the RAW importer is set to manufacturer in Expression Media 2. The images appear as generic icons in Thumbnail view and display a render error in Media view. To workaround this issue, set the “Preferred Engine” to Apple (Expression Media 2 > Preferences > Media Rendering > RAW tab).
Microsoft Expression Media 2 Import via Control-Click is missing. In Leopard, when performing a control-click on an image, there was an option called “Microsoft Expression Media 2 Import”. This option does not exist in Snow Leopard.

incorporating an HTML gallery into Expression Web

AnitaO — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:02:30 GMT

We quite often have questions on the Expression Media forum about how people can take the galleries they created in Expression Media and integrate them into their overall website in Expression Web.

To answer that question in a central location, here is a tutorial using the sample images in Windows (XP, but Vista has some too). I'm really starting from scratch, so if you already know how to use Expression Media to create galleries, I apologize for being too granular.

Open Expression Media.
On the File menu, click Import Items --> From Files or folders
Navigate to My Documents --> My Pictures, and follow the shortcut to Sample Pictures.
Select the JPG images in the sample pcitures, and click Import.

This creates your catalog. Your gallery will be created from any images that are showing when you create the gallery. So, to illustrate that, hide one of the images by clicking on the thumbnail and clicking Find --> Hide Selected.

Now:

Click Make --> HTML Gallery
Give the site a title - in the title box
From the Theme dropdown, pick a gallery that you like. Let's say Dark Gray. On the Settings tab, change the JPEG quality to high.
For now, leave the rest of the options as they are. You may want to alter the thumbnail size or make other changes at other times, but this will give you a start.
Click on the Make... button. Select your desktop and Click Make New Folder. Name it whatever you like.
Click OK. Your gallery will be created.

To incorporate the gallery to your website:
Open your Expression Web site, and arrange Web so that you can see the folder with your gallery in it on the desktop. Drag the folder into Expression Web's folder structure at the root of the web.
Open the page that you want to link to the gallery. Insert a hyperlink to the index page of your new gallery, just as if you were using FrontPage.

Note: You will not have a link back to the rest of your web from the gallery unless you open the index page and add one. You can do that or let people click on Back to get to the rest of the web.

To get around the lack of a link back to the rest of the web, I created a custom template with a navigation bar to the different sections of my web. So to get from any of the galleries to anywhere else in the site. I also have several galleries, so I created an index page manually with links to each gallery. This is the index page:

This is a gallery:

If you are interested in creating your own custom template, see http://blogs.msdn.com/xmediasupport/archive/2007/12/27/under-the-covers-how-html-galleries-work.aspx.

REplacement for SP2 is out!

AnitaO — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:43:28 GMT

The download sites for Windows build 2.0.2096.0, which replaces the original SP2, are now live. Note: the Windows versions are patches, not full installs. Make sure you look below the links for installation instructions.

Links to each country’s downloads are:

1. http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/4/5/94594C63-A4CA-4468-A271-7DEDFB050C4D/MediaPatch_fr.msp

2. http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/6/2/4625C8CC-4BBD-41C4-BAE0-DD90C202E8B7/MediaPatch_es.msp

3. http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/5/6353ABBA-2076-4856-B259-ABD8987644E7/MediaPatch_en.msp

4. http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/9/D/89D51C10-7504-45A3-A8AB-CDD9296EC5CC/MediaPatch_de.msp

5. http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/D/C/8DC92A13-33AC-45B3-94C3-8C2C8FD005C9/MediaPatch_zh-CHS.msp

6. http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/5/6/0566AF5F-B608-4732-82E4-82A52E60C7B9/MediaPatch_ja.msp

7. http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/2/9/E29725F8-B476-414A-B3BC-9C7B1DCD507B/MediaPatch_zh-CHT.msp

8. http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/4/0/8402AA0B-75DB-4626-B8F7-C395866CD8C1/MediaPatch_it.msp

9. http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/B/5/3B5F9116-FEDB-4411-8B7F-36B96ED4CB6E/MediaPatch_ko.msp

If you are on the original SP2 for Windows, you will need to roll back to SP1. If that’s impossible, uninstall and install SP1, and then patch to receive the upgrade.

The English link for Mac is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=bb6aa4e5-1101-4116-9513-030679a14b77. I do not have all of them for other localized versions, but if you search www.microsoft.com/downloads for SP2, and make sure you download build 2096, you will get the right one. It will install properly over any older build.

Issues that this fixes, which were broken in the original SP2 release are:

On French and Dutch Macintosh only, the media rendering preferences dialog was unusable. The first tab changed some of the options, and you could not interact with it to reset them. The second and third tabs were totally blank.
On both platforms, arrowing through the images in Media view would stick asynchronous rendering at the preview stage. On Windows, the only way to get out of this state was to kill the process. If you simply closed Expression Media, the media.exe process was left in memory.
On both platforms, if you build full screen previews, and your media items are offline, you can’t get to media view. The tab changes but on Windows the media window is blank, and on Mac, the media window still shows all the thumbnails.

Our apologies for the problems inherent in the first release. We are confident that this one is solid.

Regards,
Anita Oakley

Microsoft Future Pro Photographer’s Competition

AnitaO — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:11:20 GMT

Hi everyone,

Our Pro Photo group has announced the 4th annual Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition. It’s open to full time college and university students from around the world.* There are no entry fees, and students are invited to submit their three best photos in one of three categories:

Nature and Landscape
People and Portraits
Sports and Photojournalism

Prizes include a $20,000 Grand Prize and three 1st place prizes of $3,000. Winners also receive an Epson printer, Lenovo PC mobile workstation, and a five year membership in Professional Photographers of America.

You can get more information about the competition, see http://blogs.msdn.com/prophoto/archive/2009/03/12/20-000-microsoft-photo-contest.aspx.

You can see some of the work of previous winners at http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/galleries/fppc08_gallery.aspx.

Official rules of competition are at http://prophoto.microsoft.avitivacorp.com/Site.aspx?cfn=Submission_guidelines_and_official_rules.html.

**Void in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, and the Province of Quebec

Replacement for SP2 coming soon

AnitaO — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:17:19 GMT

The development team, testers, and your support team have been working hard to get a replacement for SP2 to you as soon as possible. Most of the issues have been resolved, and testing is underway.

Based on user feedback we will be removing asynchronous rendering from the product with the replacement service pack. Rendering in Media and Light Table views will default back to the way it was done in SP1.

Microsoft really does listen.

SP2 bug alert

AnitaO — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:08:59 GMT

Hello,

I’m sorry to report that we’ve discovered two rather serious problems with SP2 in all languages:

As several threads have discussed, we have two rather bad issues connected to SP2:

Even if you have offline previews built, they won't show in the Media View
Asynchronous rendering may get stuck if you page through images in Media View or the Light Table

We have found a fix for offline previews, and it's currently in testing. As soon as we feel confident that the fix does not have any undesirable side-effects, we will release an update.
The asynchronous rendering issue is still under investigation. When we have a fix for it, we'll test and release it as a hotfix as well.

problem discovered in French and Dutch SP2

AnitaO — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:54:33 GMT

We have discovered a serious bug in Rendering Preferences for Macintosh Dutch and French versions of SP2. The development team is pulling those from the update site, and fixing the problem as quickly as they can. We expect these versions to be reposted before the end of the day today.

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes.

Expression media 2 SP2 has been released!

AnitaO — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:26:34 GMT

Hello Everyone,

The release for Expression Media 2, Service pack 2 was released for the following languages today:

German, French, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean on Windows
Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish on Mac

I promised a list of fixes – you can also find these in Microsoft KB article 962902. The download site mentioned in the article may not quite be available yet, but the Microsoft Update and the Mac AutoUpdate sites are working. Just check for updates to download the service pack!

Issues that this service pack fixes in Macintosh and in Windows

Importing a number of large images is very slow
XML export and import may scramble custom fields
Catalogs that are saved from a Macintosh lose paths to original media if the catalogs are opened from a server on a Windows-based computer
Original file paths are used instead of new file paths when you are copying items to a new catalog
Silverlight 2.0 is not detected correctly by Mozilla Firefox browsers when you are viewing Silverlight HTML galleries
Thumbnails cannot honor file's embedded color profile
Note Thumbnails should be rebuilt after you install this service pack for colors to be correct.

Issues that this service pack fixes in Windows

User preference for rendering engine is not used
Right-clicking to open a file in the default application opens wrong file after you sort the files in list view
Moving hierarchical keywords may incorrectly apply flat keywords to images
Scripting annotations garbles text with Unicode characters
File paths are broken if the imported folder contains more than 1024 subfolders
You cannot reset paths when you set a path to the root of a drive
Expression Media 2 may crash when you import a file from a folder that was removed from the organize panel
Expression Media 2 may crash when an import is canceled and then files are imported from the root of a drive
Renaming a folder on a network share may fail and the folder may disappear from organize panel
Files whose names have more than 64 characters are always imported again when you update folders in organize panel
Additional folders are not added in organize panel for saved catalogs when the disk volume name is the system default. Typically, the system default is a "Local Disk"
TIFF RAW files from Phase One Digital Backs consume several megabytes in catalog space
Random numbers may display on catalog folders if the disk does not have a volume name
HTML gallery links show question marks when the gallery is viewed in Mozilla Firefox browsers

Issues that this service pack fixes in Macintosh

You cannot import PPT and XLS files
"Contact sheet out of range" errors are improved and the experience for making contact sheets is improved
Batch Rename feature changes Cyrillic characters into question mark characters when you are using the "Strip Diacriticals" function
When you use the "Update Folders Now" function, duplicate folders may be shown and file links may be broken

Expression Media 2, SP2 coming soon

AnitaO — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:14:11 GMT

Hi everyone,

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged here. But I have great news for the Expression Media user community, and it’s too big to just put a quick notice in the Expression Media forum!

At the end of February we will release a service pack of epic proportions – well, to me it seems that way. Some of the notable problems fixed in this service pack are:

Importing a number of large images is very slow
Original file paths are used instead of new file paths when copying items to a new catalog.
Moving hierarchical keywords may incorrectly apply flat keywords to images
HTML gallery links show question marks when viewed in Mozilla Firefox browsers

All of these issues have been prominent on the Expression Media Forum, but the fix I’m most excited about is improved color management. People with high gamut monitors will especially notice that the colors in Expression Media match those in other color managed applications.

Watch for a complete list in the knowledgebase article that will release with the service pack. I’ll post the URL to it when it’s time.

-Anita-

Agency submission tools now available

AnitaO — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:15:31 GMT

Hello everyone,

From time to time we've had requests for the agency uploaders that iView Media Pro provided. They are finally available for Expression Media! You can get them from http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc825382.aspx, downloadable as Power Toys, and available for Getty, Corbis, and Almay. The advantages of using them include:

Upload directly from Expression Media to your stock agency.
Each Uploader is programmed with requirements for its agency, so it will flag any images that don't meet them.

iview forums are going away

AnitaO — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:18:27 GMT

Expression Media won't be affected, but we want to make sure that everyone knows that the iView user forums are not going to be active after the end of this month. Our hosting contracts are expiring, but we are making plans to move the content to Microsoft servers. You will be able to search the content and pull out previous posts, but not post new questions or answers.

Other content from the servers will also be migrated, and we are migrating DNS mappings so that existing URLs continue to work.

Note: This is the iView forum, not the Expression Media forum. http://social.expression.microsoft.com/forums/en-us/media/threads/ will still be going strong. Any new forum topics should be opened on the Expression Media forum.

New upgrade eligibility for Expression Media

AnitaO — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:14:08 GMT

This is just a quick note to let you know that the upgrade requirements for Expression Media have changed effective immediately to open up the upgrade version to a larger number of users. Users may purchase the upgrade SKU of Expression Media 2 if:

· They have licensed copy of an earlier version of xMedia or iView.

· Any licensed photographic software including Windows Photo Gallery or iPhoto.

Essentially, everyone qualifies for the upgrade pricing!

Photokina report

AnitaO — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:55:22 GMT

Hi all,

I've just returned from Photokina in Cologne, Germany. It was quite an experience. Ten huge buildings, two floors each, full of photo gear, accessories, software, printers, you name it. If it is photographic, it must have been there somewhere.

There was no way I could see the whole thing, but I made it a point to get to the Epson and Canon displays, and they were truly impressive. The new 5D Mark II created a huge buzz, and the G10 did too, on the Point and Shoot front. I salivated over the large format printers, and shed tears over some of the fast L series lenses.

One interesting thing that I haven't seen elsewhere is that several of the companies sponsored models and lighting setups. You could shoot to your heart's consent, no charge, no model release. Here's one I got during the show:

The Microsoft Booth was really quite attractive - very modern and sleek. We had a theater and lounge areas on either end. Between and to the sides there were booths for different Microsoft Imaging technologies. The Pro Photo Tools were featured, as were Expression Media, Office 2008 Media Edition, Windows Home Server, Microsoft Research.

Then in the theater, we had presentations on Pro Photo Tools, PhotoSynth, Deep Zoom and the Yosemite Project, Capture One, Using Capture One and Expression Media to improve your workflow, Image Composite Editor, Windows Live, and many others.

In conjunction with the show, we focused on both Photosynth - which allows you to create 3D composites of a subject or area, and the Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) for incredible panorama stitching. Pro Photo Tools also got quite a bit of attention.

A little more about ICE - No more do you need to carefully calculate your nodal point, level the camera, and carefully match the exposure to get a good panorama. It runs as an application on your system, and you can save out in one of several different formats, including common ones like JPEG or TIFF, and more advanced tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom. ICE makes panoramas easy! I stood in one spot and shot a 360 of the Canon booth - didn't switch to manual exposure; didn't pay any attention to the level of my camera. ICE did a remarkable job stitching them into a single panorama.

Unlike Microsoft ICE, Photosynth runs as a web-based service. The viewer is necessary to explore a synth, but it's a free download. Here is a great video tutorial on how to synth (new verb) http://photosynth.net/howtosynth.aspx. Essentially, Photosynth can analyze similarities between hundreds of images of the same item or place, taken by one photographer or many. Then it builds a 3-D model of that, and you can move around the scene, zoom in and out, and truly get the experience of being there. Relive a vacation, or visit a distant place you have always wanted to see.

Another fascinating theater session was the Deep Zoom Yosemite Project... Combining panorama with Silverlight, Microsoft - in conjunction with the park service and several other sponsor companies - photographed the entire Yosemite Valley in a single hour. It required months of planning and many volunteer teams, but the results are starting to come in, and they are fantastic! One complete side of the valley is now stitched together, and the other side is in process. You can dig into some of the composite panoramas here. You can also download the Deep Zoom composer here.

The area around Cologne is absolutely beautiful. We took a drive down the Rhine Valley to the south, and shot some castles. Toured one - quite a climb up from the roadside! But it was well worth it. Then at night, we did a couple of trips over to the river - just on the other side of the Fair - and shot the Cologne Cathedral and railroad bridge at night. I know every photographer who ever went to Cologne has the same shots, but now I have them, too.

All in all a great trip, good reception for Expression Media and Capture One as partners in photographic workflow. This brings me to the big announcement... Phase One and Microsoft have joined forces - Capture One limited edition, and Expression Media 2 are now available in a bundled package. Current Capture One users can purchase Expression Media 2 for 79 Euro, or 119 US Dollars through the Phase One site. Windows or Mac - a great deal!

Capture One is simply the best RAW processor I've ever seen. You can make several adjustments to an image and then selectively apply some of them to any number of additional images. The controls for RAW processing are intuitive and very powerful. In many (most) cases, processing in Capture One and saving out as uncompressed TIFF is all I need to do.

Expression Media doesn't do a good job of editing - Capture One doesn't do a great job at image organization and catalogs. Together we've got the workflow pretty well sown up.

Uploading to consumer sharing sites

AnitaO — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:20:29 GMT

Hello All,

It's come to our attention that you can use some third-party consumer upload apps successfully through Expression Media. For instance, I was able to use the Flickr uploader app from Expression Media easily. Do do that:

Sign up for a Flickr account.
Download and install the Flickr uploader
In the Flickr uploader set permissions for the uploader to access your Flickr account.
Under Edit --> Preferences --> Helper Apps, add the Flickr uploader app in as a helper.
Select the files that you want to upload. Sync annotations back to the media files.
Right-click and select open with --> Flickr Uploadr
Click Upload. The uploader will add images to your image store on Flickr, and any metadata you synched with the original media files will be transferred along with the images.

At this point, you can click the link to open Flickr and add any more comments or tags that you want.