Show self: video encoding using the Microsoft Expression Encoder 3 SDK

In one of my favorite movie scenes, Clark W. Griswold (played by Chevy Chase in "Crazy Christmas Holidays") trapped himself in the attic while hiding Christmas presents. To keep warm, he wore pink gloves, green hats and brown fur shawls found from dusty closets. At the bottom of the wardrobe, he found a family movie that had been recorded since he was a teenager. With tears in his eyes, he finished the film with an old film projector.

Since then, family movies have gone through a long journey, but people are still plagued by the same problem: How to show my movies to friends and family? We can easily share videos through sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook, but uploading data to these sites is a time-consuming task for hundreds of megabytes of high-definition video per minute. Your portable device, gaming system, or home Theater Media Center may not even be able to play these files. To resolve these issues, you need to convert the video to another format. This process is called "encoding."

About Expression Encoder

Microsoft Video Coding Tool Expression Encoder 3 is part of the Expression family of products that can be used to create compelling user interfaces for Web and desktop applications. Expression Encoder also offers free and paid editions. The paid edition is included in the Expression Studio 3 Suite (USD 599) and the Expression Web 3 Suite (USD 149). The free download version does not support encoding into Silverlight Smooth streaming or H.264 video, nor does it support H.264 video sources, but is encoded into a Windows Media videos file with a nice SDK. Many of the code examples in this article require a paid version of the program, but all code examples can be compiled in a free version of the SDK, only to receive invalidmediaexception or featurenotavailableexception prompts at run time.

If you do not intend to purchase the Expression Suite, you can download the free version of Expression encoder:microsoft.com/expression via the link below. Expression encoder is also included in Expression Professional MSDN subscriptions or Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Premium subscriptions. Note that you can buy a professional video coding software application with this feature pack and support a variety of input and output formats with a cost of 149 dollars, which is a very favorable price. and buying a similar video coding solution would cost up to 3,000 dollars.

Regardless of which version you choose, install Encoder 3 QFE. It adds support for more file types and input devices, improves program performance in some cases, and fixes minor bugs. The QFE installer is available on the Expression Encoder page of the Microsoft Expression Web site.

Supported formats

The following input video formats are supported:

Windows Media video (. wmv)

DVD video (. vob)

MPEG (. mpg,. mpeg)

Audio video Interleave (. avi)

Microsoft Digital Video recording (. dvr-ms)