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Here's a screen shot of the main working window, showing a job with 6 videos... ready to batch encode.

Newsletter #148 is about the first look at the Expression Media Encoder. Click the image to read it.

Newsletters are published weekly to subscribers only, but posted online for open viewing a couple months later. Use this link to the Products and Services page for more info and to subscribe.

Behind the Scenes (later)

Tips and Tricks

#1 - The encoder can run on XP or Vista, but needs a video card that supports Pixel shader 2.0 (the same needed for Vista's aeroglass). Without it, you'll get a message on the preview monitor "Video hardware not found. Preview will be disabled".

#2 - If Silverlight packages produced by the Encoder play fine on your computer, but not from the link to your website, you may need to adjust the server IIS properties to add .xaml as a MIME type. In my case, using a 1&1 website host 'shared server' with many other users, I can't tweak the IIS properties... so I use a 'hack'.

Rename the player.xaml to player.xaml.txt and change the pointer in the StartPlayer.js file to align with the new file name of player.xaml.txt. IIS will serve up the XAML file fine and Silverlight is flexible enough to not need a XAML file extension.

While you're tweaking things, rename the EmePlayer.js file to emeplayer.js (lower case) to align with how it's called on from the MediaDefition.media file. Servers can consider a lower case letter different from an upper case one.

What Can go Wrong

• 1 - My hardware acceleration slider (XP system) got accidentally moved all the way to the left to the 'none' position, and the encoder gave an error message about video hardware not being found.

For fixes and work-arounds, see the same item number in the next section....

Fixes and Work-Arounds

• 1 - If hardware acceleration is at or below the third notch of the slider (XP system), where it disables all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations... adjust it upwards.