How to Build Silverlight Video Players with Expression Encoder
videos

How to Build Silverlight Video Players with Expression Encoder

on Sep 20th 2010 with 15 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Programs: Expression Studio 4 (Blend + Encoder)
  • Screencast Duration: 30 mins

The Silverlight category over at Activetuts+ has been steadily gaining momentum over the last couple of months. However, the world of RIA’s covers a broad range of subjects, so we thought it fitting that Nettuts+ readers enjoyed a slice of the pie too. Dig into this screencast and, if you’re interested, pay a visit to ActiveTuts+ for plenty more Silverlight content when you’re done!

What’s Covered?

This is a quick look at how to use MediaElement in Expression Blend to form the starting point of a custom video/audio player. We’ll also look at how Expression Encoder can take any video and generate a Silverlight video player from it with no code including;

  • different templates for your player
  • playlists
  • chapters
  • offline support
  • caption support
  • overlays

View Screencast

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Other Awesome Silverlight Tuts

Take a quick peek at some of the other Silverlight screencasts Activetuts+ has to offer:

  • An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 1

    An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 1

    This is the first of two screencasts demonstrating how to build a simple Silverlight 4 map application, using Visual Studio and the C# programming language. You’ll get a decent overview of the Silverlight workflow, and learn what advantages it has over …similar technologies.

    Read more…

  • An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 2

    An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 2

    Part two of our Silverlight Introduction tutorial. In this screencast, Mike shows you how to save your walking routes to disk, and how to improve your app’s design using Expression Blend.

    Read more…

  • Silverlight and XAML

    Silverlight and XAML

    XAML is a key part of Silverlight development – it allows you to declaratively define your user interface and it makes it easy for tools such as Visual Studio and Expression Blend to share that UI definition. In this video we take a look at some of the key features of XAML that you’ll encounter whilst working with Silverlight and also a little around how XAML ‘works’ in your Silverlight applications.

    Read more…

  • Styling Silverlight UI Elements

    Styling Silverlight UI Elements

    The ability to apply style to user interface elements is something that we’re familiar with from HTML/CSS. Silverlight has some similar mechanisms for applying groups of common properties to parts (or the whole) of your user interface. In this video, we’re going to dive into styling in Silverlight.

    Read more…

  • Databinding with Silverlight

    Databinding with Silverlight

    Databinding is key, key, key in Silverlight. Additionally, it’s key. No, really. The basic idea is that we don’t want to write code that transfers data between the objects representing data in your program and the UI controls presenting that data to the user. If you’re not using Databinding, keeping UI controls and the data separate in your Silverlight applications, then the chances are you’re doing it wrong.

    Read more…

Useful Links

Mike Taulty Microsoft (UK): http://mtaulty.com: mtaulty@microsoft.com: twitter.com/mtaulty

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Mike Taulty works in the Developer and Platform Group at Microsoft in the UK where he has spent the past few years helping developers understand and get the best from the Microsoft platform. Prior to this, Mike spent 3 years with Microsoft Consulting Services as a consultant on developer technologies. You can find more of a complete career history over on LinkedIn.  

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  • http://www.wdonline.com Jeremy

    Fantastic. And I want Bend. I missed the boat =(

  • Derk

    Silverlight… is this any good? I never paid attetion to it since it looked like a desperate attempt from Microsoft taking over the streaming business…. flash still seems to be the leader though… and soon HTML5.

    • http://www.twitter.com/raffi_s Raffi_S

      *word*

  • w1sh

    Look at that Microsoft fan…

    +1 on Flash and Silverlight being pointless to start learning at this point.

    • http://www.wdonline.com Jeremy

      I wouldn’t necessarily say that. Technologies like Flash and Silverlight make it much easier to write applications that look and work on all platforms and browsers (that support the plug-in), and you’ll continue to see these technologies used for rich web applications. Web development is getting easier and quicker, but its still light years from what it could be.

      The problem with Flash is Adobe pigeon-holed it as a content delivery platform (video and ads). Silverlight is better positioned to fill the need for quick and flexible Web apps.

      • http://daulex.com daulex

        The terms you used: quick and flexible.

        They’re quick to people who built their careers using these technologies and are now reluctant to let the dinosaurs die off.

        Flash is about as flexible as a huge cube of steel.

        There is no need for these additional as all they do is precious cpu ticks.

        100% with w1sh on this.

      • http://www.wdonline.com Jeremy

        OK. You got me with Flash. I’m not a fan of the platform. My statements were primarily geared towards Silverlight.

        I still stand by my statements. Until leaps and bounds are made in Web development to make it more like conventional application development, there will be a need for platforms like Silverlight.

    • Jacob Krustchinsky

      Once again you pop into a free tutorial and throw you inflated opinion of the world for all to see. I tire greatly of how you contribute nothing more back to this site than your skewed views on the world of development. DO you really think anyone takes you seriously? “WOW, he said it sucked, I won’t use it now!” no.

      Silver light and flash are not supposed to be rivals, at all. SIlverlight is a sub product of Microsoft’s WPF, which was developed to bring Office products to the web that offers a rich, more involved language. SIlverlight is best utilized for very data rich, complex applications/showcases that require more lower level ( closer to the machine ) programming that require more syntax, operations and overall development tools than Flash offers. Flash has always been something to pretty up a site or create quick showcasing plugins ( like a video player ). More recently, Adobe has coupled it with .air to make a more data rich tool that can allow Flash to be used for other things as well. Although both can compare to some level, if you fail to see the obvious difference between what group of people both appeal to, you shouldn’t even have an opinion…well an opinion anyone should take seriously.

  • http://mtaulty.com Mike

    Naturally, I disagree that it’s “pointless to start learning Silverlight (or Flash) at this point” :-)

    There’s a huge array of client devices out there. Phone devices like iPhone, Android and the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 devices.

    “PC” like devices – laptops, netbooks, [tablets/slates], all-in-ones like the iMac or the HP TouchSmart.

    Pretty much all of these run one or more web browsers so you can definitely take the approach that you can target them by targeting the web browsers that run on them.

    But my view is that this does not always get you to the depth of integration that you need on the client device and so device “providers” typically have some native API for you to get that deeper integration.

    Client integration like “Making a Phone Call’. Client integration like “sharing some data with another application on the device”.

    It also doesn’t give you consistency. Different browsers implement different parts of standards in different ways meaning you’re doing to a lot of “feature sniffing” and testing or working around inconsistencies.

    I don’t believe for one second that this is specific to Windows. I’m typing this on a Macintosh where I see Nambu, Windows Messenger, iTunes, Spotify, Mail, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Word, Excel, etc on my Dock.

    The front ends of these applications are not browser based, they are built using a “more native” API that’s closer to the specific capabilities of the device on which it’s running and, today, those APIs also give you a richer experience on that specific device than the browser delivers.

    For Windows that might mean writing with one of the more “native APIs” like .NET or the Windows API.

    For OSX, iOS that might mean writing with one or more of the “native APIs” like Cocoa.

    I believe those APIs are also still important because they move much more quickly than the standards based APIs. To evolve a standard takes an awfully long time and then there’s the question of getting that standard implemented and deployed.

    To evolve an API that’s “closer” to a particular device takes a lot less time and provides for a whole lot of agility.

    I think Apple made a very strong case for this recently by highlighting the sorts of lengths that they were prepared to go to to “defend their API” and keep it “close to the device” ( my paraphrasing ).

    I think that Silverlight is in a very interesting place as it’s somewhere between the two.

    I develop a Silverlight application like a desktop application with .NET and C#. I deploy it like a web application by dropping some bits onto a web server.

    It runs in a secure sandbox within the confines of the browser or I can tweak its settings and run it out of the browser like an offline desktop application.

    I write it on Windows but it runs equally happily on OS X and the consistency story is there – I don’t have to test each combination of browser/platform and sniff out the features. I know what’s present.

    I get a deeper level of platform integration than I get in a browser based application – even in the video space I go beyond “playing a video” and move towards streamed, protected video that’s heading towards surround sound and has the ability for you to plug in codecs.

    But Silverlight is an application platform, it’s not a video player. I get strong 2D graphics capabilities, I get strong data and networking capabilities and I get a very, very strong and powerful model for re-usable controls that I can drag-drop to make UI’s quickly and easily like these;

    http://labs.infragistics.com/silverlight/lobsamples/2010.2/
    http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/
    http://www.componentone.com/SuperProducts/StudioSilverlight/Demos/
    http://www.vectorlight.net/demos/extra_controls.aspx

    I think it’s interesting to see how companies are mixing technologies like Silverlight into websites and so point to an example of a UK company I spoke to just the other week who are doing just that;

    http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2010/09/09/trader-media-group-and-silverlight.aspx

    and these guys are a mixed HTML/Silverlight/Java shop but Silverlight fitted their application requirements so they built on it.

    This is just my $0.02c and, naturally, others will disagree but I certainly feel that the debate has to be a lot more nuanced than some discussions give to it.

    Thanks,

    Mike

  • http://daulex.com daulex

    Why would you want to?

    Silverlight is years behind flash and every sensible developer wants flash dropped.

    The less resources for this pile of poo = the lesspeople use it and the sooner it dies off and microsoft admits that they should have spent more money on supporting the standards instead of creating a whole new platform, for which there was no demand and there was no need.

    • http://www.wdonline.com Jeremy

      Silverlight is years behind flash and every sensible developer wants flash dropped.

      I disagree. While Silverlight 1 was behind Flash, SL quickly gained ground and surpassed Flash in every way–even down to the development tools. I suggest actually using the platform and technology before bashing it, even if bashing is the cool thing to do.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

        Agreed with Jeremy.

        I’m always amazed by the number of people who knock a platform without ever using it.

  • http://www.crearedesign.co.uk Steve Maggs

    It has always struck me that Flash has been stretched beyond its intended uses by a combination of necessity and the the skill of the developers/designers that use it. That it has managed for so long to be the default tool for web games, video content, banner ads etc is testament to how robust it is (and the lack of competition).

    Flash isn’t meant to build apps, Silverlight is, while Adobe wrings the last drops out of Flash (Flex seems to have bombed) it could miss the boat on the next generation of web apps. Having said all that just bashing Flash (or Silverlight) because you believe you know the future of the web better than two of it’s biggest players adds nothing to the debate.

    Flash and Silverlight are fantastic tools, if you’re going to ridicule them at least give us some examples of why other methods are better!

  • Tim

    Why do people feel the need to rag on anything MS? Its so boring!

    Silverlight is useful and practical now (for certain situations), while HTML5/CSS3 is coming but will not be available in practical terms for some time.

    One huge reason to use Silverlight is if your already writing .Net code

    Many clients ask for things that may be possible with HTML5 but would require a lot of JavaScript. If your already a Flash/Flex user then that’s a great established route – but if your not then Silverlight is a real practical solution for meeting customers needs.

  • http://www.webspiders.com Ashley

    I don’t think Silverlight is going to become obsolete or irrelevant anytime soon. it is still a strong, powerful platform, and most of its critics seem to be just following the mantra ‘If it’s from MS, it must be bad’. Nor is it a direct competitor of Flash.