Streaming Media - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 72) Frame to insert a keyframe at the marker position; then check Thumbnail to create a thumbnail to be used by the Silverlight player. Markers can also trigger script commands for captions or external events, like opening your browser to a webpage, and they can work with SAMI and DVXP caption files. In Figure 9, you can see the captions I have triggered to appear with each scene in the video. That’s all for this tab; let’s move to Output. express yourself Microsoft’s response is that this isn’t a problem; it’s an opportunity, since if you’re comfortable with scripting and working in a Flash-like environment, you can customize the interface in Blend 2. Fair enough, but the job isn’t trivial, since you have to manually customize The Output Tab We’re almost done. There are three functions on the Output tab, and the first is relatively perfunctory: choosing a thumbnail type and size for your Marker thumbnails. I’ll let you make those choices yourself. The second relates to Job Output, which involves multiple decisions, the first of which is choosing from among the 15 Output Templates Silverlight offers. (Figure 10). You'll see that "None" is also a choice. If you don’t choose a template, the Expression Encoder produces only the WMV file. If you do choose a template, the encoder produces all files necessary to upload the “Silverlight Experience” to either a streaming server or regular web server for playback. Though I'm impressed by Microsoft Silverlight overall, I’ve got a couple of grumbles. First, you can’t preview your video in the selected template, which would have been nice. Second, some templates don’t conform to the aspect ratio of your video, which means letterboxing, typically on the sides for 4:3 video, and top and bottom for 16:9. Since you can’t preview, you may not notice this until you actually upload the project to your web server, which is a pain. If you experiment with enough templates, you’ll find a template that doesn’t letterbox, but your choices will be much narrower. For example, in Figure 11, I used the Expression template to produce without letterboxing. Figure 10. Expression Encoder’s Output tab and templates Figure 11 (far left). Here’s my final video with chapter points atop and captions below. Figure 12 (near left). Microsoft’s Silverlight Streaming Service provides all codes necessary for linking, embedding, and making the file play on your webpage. 72 STREAMING MEDIA December 2007/January 2008
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