Preparing Multimedia Data for Silverlight

Adobe Flash has made a remarkable transition in the past few years. Market penetration of the Flash player (the plug-in) has always been very high, but whenever a new player version came out, it took several months for it to reach a good-size audience. However, this adoption has sped up significantly recently. There may be many reasons for this, but one of the most compelling is that recent Flash versions have acquired much better video support. Given that video sites such as YouTube are extremely popular at the moment, they prompt users to install the latest player to see the content.

Multimedia support is a key feature of many browser plug-ins, and Silverlight clearly does not want to disappoint its users here. For obvious reasons, the supported media formats are biased toward Microsoft's offerings. Silverlight supports Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) files, versions 7 through 9. Also, WMVA and WMVC1, two rather new video formats from Microsoft, are supported. The only external format Silverlight can process is the very popular MP3 audio format.

There is a reason for this bias, however. The plug-in plays content in these formats without the help of any other software or player. So, it is not necessary to have an MP3 player or even Windows Media Player to play supported multimedia content in Silverlight. This applies to both the Windows and Mac platforms.

Silverlight also supports streaming, in the form of either Windows Media Server streaming data, or ASX files. Note, however, that the stream support has some limitations: the content may not be paused and not all ASX features are supported. Refer to the Silverlight SDK for a list of restrictions when using streamed multimedia data.

Preparing Multimedia Data

Ideally, you already have your audio or video data in the correct format and can directly embed it into your Silverlight application . However, usually at least one step remains—converting the audio data. For example, the audio data could be in the wrong format, the video data might be too big for reasonable web playback, or you would like to add some markers to a video presentation. You can use some helpful tools to get your multimedia data into the right format.

1. Converting Data

Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft began bundling a simple but reasonable video editing tool: the Windows Movie Maker. If you are using Windows XP and don't see it in your Start menu, you might want to visit Windows Update (menu entry in Internet Explorer's Tools menu) and install it from there. Windows Vista users will find the Windows Movie Maker in their Start menu. However, there is a catch; if you have an outdated video card, its hardware acceleration may not be good enough for Windows Movie Maker (see Figure 1). Also, some editions of Windows don't come with Windows Movie Maker. If this is the case, there is one more option: an older Windows Movie Maker version, 2.6, has been made available for Windows Vista. You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc&DisplayLang=en.

Note that Windows Movie Maker needs some libraries installed by Windows Media Player. Some Windows editions (the ones whose names are ending in "N"—e.g., Vista Business N) do not come with Windows Media Player, but you can download it too: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1d224714-e238-4e45-8668-5166114010ca&DisplayLang=en. Do not let the name of the download page confuse you: although it says that you get "Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP," it also runs under Windows Vista and restores the Windows Media components there, as you can see in Figure 2.

NOTE

Make sure you visit Windows Update after installing Windows Media Player, since there have been some security updates for this product recently.

Figure 1. The graphics card is not good enough for Windows Movie Maker

Figure 2. "N" editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista can get Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker

You can import a number of formats into Windows Movie Maker, including AVI. Within the software, you can also cut the video and add special effects, including rotating effects (see Figure 3). For instance, the sample video used in this chapter was originally recorded in portrait mode, but cameras usually default to landscape mode. Windows Movie Maker provided an easy way to get the video into the right orientation.

Figure 3. Windows Movie Maker

After editing the video, you can export it using FileSave Movie File. You can tune the output format quite a bit (see Figure 4). If you optimize it for web play, you have a lower quality, but the file size can get drastically smaller. If you want to retain reasonable video and audio quality, the trade-off may be a big file size. Experiment a bit with the settings to find a good compromise between size and quality.

Figure 4. Tuning the output format

Another video editing option is a tool from the Microsoft Expression offerings : the Microsoft Expression Media Encoder (see Figure 5).

At this writing, you can get a time-limited trial version from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ba187636-abb6-4e55-9706-5bd346e39ea9&DisplayLang=en (the full version is available for purchase). The Expression Media Encoder installs special profiles for generating Silverlight content.

Figure 5. Microsoft Expression Media Encoder

A third option, available only for Windows versions 2000 and XP, is the Windows Media Encoder 9 series. This is available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&DisplayLang=en. Figure 6 shows the software in action.

Figure 6. Windows Media Encoder

2. Adding Markers

An advanced multimedia feature that can be really convenient, especially with video data, is marker support. This lets you mark special points within a media file. You can compare this to the chapters of a movie on a DVD, where you can jump between chapters to reach a certain point in the movie.

The same things are valid for markers. You can define markers, either within the media file (covered in this section) or, temporarily, within the Silverlight application . Silverlight provides a C# API that can access markers and also determine when a marker has been reached.

The Windows Media File Editor component of the Windows Media Encoder allows markers to be inserted into Microsoft's video formats. Figure 7 shows what this looks like. Just navigate to certain positions in the file, provide a name, and you have a marker. Microsoft Expression Media Encoder also allows you to set markers in the UI. The marker editor resides by default in the top-right corner and is displayed in Figure 8.

Figure 7. Setting markers in Windows Media File Editor

Figure 8. Setting markers in Expression Media Encoder

3. Streaming Video

When you convert media data into one of the supported formats, the whole file will then be loaded from the Silverlight plug-in and will play. A much better option, of course, is to use streaming video. With streaming video, the file resides at a (usually fast) remote server, the amount of data transferred can be adapted to the connection speed of the current user, and it is impossible to directly download the media file. Various streaming options exist, but for Silverlight users, the Windows Media Server is a good choice. Microsoft has recently started to offer more or less free Silverlight streaming. "More or less free" means there are some restrictions, but for many scenarios, they do not hurt the application. Currently, the maximum speed for streaming is 700 kbps, and the streamed files may comprise up to 4 GB of space. The streaming service is currently in alpha, and later versions will add additional restrictions, but plans include 1 million minutes of streaming per month or unlimited streaming if you agree to have advertisements shown.

The streaming service's home page, http://silverlight.live.com/, contains up-to-date information about the streaming service and the current restrictions.

There are two ways to use the streaming service. You can either host your complete Silverlight application on the streaming server, or just put your video file up on the server and reference it in your locally hosted Silverlight application. At the time of this writing, the service and API are frequently changing, so we will discuss it only briefly here.

Figure 9 shows the streaming site, and Figure 10 shows how you can upload your own files and applications to the service. You can find more information in the web-based Silverlight streaming SDK at http://dev.live.com/silverlight/.

Figure 9. Streaming for Silverlight

Figure 10. You may upload both full-blown applications and individual media content

If you are using Microsoft Expression Media Encoder, the application already comes with suitable Silverlight profiles for exporting content. However, when you want to use the Windows Media Encoder, you can find Silverlight profiles at: http://dev.live.com/silverlight/downloads/profiles.zip.