Incorporating Videos in a Website with Silverlight Streaming and Expression Encoder

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications.

While the service is in beta, storage is free up to 10 GB and streaming is free up to 5 TB of aggregated bandwidth per user account per month. Videos should not exceed 10 minutes and have a maximum bit rate of 1.4 Mbps.

To get started all one needs is a Windows Live ID. Once signed in to the Silverlight Streaming using the Live ID a developer can upload a video to the Silverlight Streaming site by clicking on Manage Videos.

Next step is to upload a video to the site. Once the upload is complete, the URL to embed the video in a webpage is provided.

If there are multiple videos and one wishes to create a playlist, the easiest way to do so is to use Expression Encoder. Import all the videos in Expression Encoder. Choose the format (and bit rate) in which the videos should be encoded (Encode tab) and the Silverlight player template that should be used (Output tab – Job Output section) and click on Encode. (There are lot of other options that one can play with like the title, the image appears as the thumbnail for the video and also divide the video in clips).

The application can be published directly to Silverlight Streaming website. However to do this one requires to download the Silverlight Streaming plugin for Expression Encoder.

If the video is uploaded from Expression Encoder, the project is uploaded as an application to the Silverlight Streaming website and can be viewed in the Manage Applications page on the Silverlight Streaming website.