Digital Video - August 2008 - (Page 36)

CLICK TO PLAY Figure 2: My new portable Silverlight TV set, the Asus EEE 701. come with Windows installed and more initial RAM but are more expensive. I had an extra legal copy of XP available for installation, which are not hard to come by these days (legally, of course) for less than bulk OEM prices. In Japan, certain wireless phone companies give you the 701 for free if you buy a 4G data plan. Even without XP’s considerable update process (depending on the vintage of your installation CD) the basic unit described above can still play full-screen video. Installing just Silverlight Version 1 (without Windows Media 10 or 11 Player) gives the machine the ability to play Windows Media 7, 8 and 9 (a.k.a. VC-1) content. Version 2 includes both Windows Media Services and “adaptive” streaming support, the ability to code applications in .NET languages, and support for the WMA 10 Professional codec. Am I recommending this as a general recipe for turning a bargain-basement UMPC (with a big enough screen) into a replacement for a low maintenance portable TV set? Yes, depending on the UMPC. The Asus EEE 701 is a good choice, as are the newer models. Is Silverlight the only option in this process? No, you can pretty much do the same thing with Flash (and AMP), the next version of which will allegedly include 3-D effects which exploit your graphics card processor (if there is one) as opposed to just your CPU. My points are that: 1) Silverlight is now more aligned with Big Broadcast as opposed to independent videography, and the amount of developer data available now (and soon to be) online is vast. 2) Most indie video producers I know don’t turn down Big Broadcast work out of hand. 3) YouTube proves Web video is TV and was a test platform for Big Broadcast webcasting all along. Good luck, Joost and similar ventures. OTHER SILVERLIGHT VIDEO ISSUES We’re still talking here about VC-1 and the other codecs supported by the downloadable Silverlight installation package — not the efficacy of the competing software development studios or JavaScript libraries. Assuming content remains forever king, the burning question is, at what quality level? In most discussion concerning whether full-screen, long-form Flash video does as good a job as Windows Media with, for example, fast-action sports footage or transcoding digital captures of 24 fps film content, the pre-Flash 8 decision usually favored Microsoft (no doubt they got their Olympics bid in early). That being said, featurelength Flash content available at www.surfthechannel.com seems to stay in sync (if you can stand the pixelation), as does Mr. Axxo’s excellent Xvid work. Perhaps one day he will switch to Silverlight and begin using the Expression Encoder (see Figure 3). Maybe all this proves is that media quality standards, even for Big Broadcast on the Web, are currently as negotiable as copyright observance from where the average end user sits (the ever-increasing amount of adult video on the Web, in all its ragged long and short-form glory, only confirms such speculation). If so, the discussions noted above are mostly sophistry as long as each encoded video stream or clip looks and sounds good enough to entertain the viewer without distracting him or her with its lack of production values. Flash can do this, so can Silverlight. Microsoft is, as usual, chasing the corporate high ground. Old-school Big Broadcast has high quality standards which will likely trickle down to Silverlight Webcasting, the details of which will then become known to the rest of us when we analyze the streams and clips, not to mention the HTML, XAML and JavaScript, on our new portable TV sets. DV SILVER(LIGHT) LINING As of this writing (mid-July, 2008), the latest version of Silverlight (2.0) that I could find for installation and testing on my XP SP3 system had the following properties: 1. Downloadable package size: 4.66 megabytes 2. Number of clicks involved: 4 (including final OK) 3. Security warning: Yes 4. License agreement: Yes 5. System restart required: No 6. Browser restart required: Yes (for all open browsers) 7. Support for streaming from Windows Media Server (SL v1 was progressive download only) 8. Support for DRM (Windows Media and PlayReady). Figure 3: The ex cellent Expressio n Encoder main user interface. 36 dv august 2008 www.dv.com http://www.surfthechannel.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - August 2008

Digital Video - August 2008 Contents DV Update My Studio Close-Up Wristshot HV30 Camcorder Tiffen DFX Bench Test PCM-D50 & R-09HR Recorders Camera Cradle Instant Expert My Passport Elite High School Confidential The Ultimate DIY Raid DV101 Click to Play Production Diary

Digital Video - August 2008

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