Streaming Learning Center

Here I’m reviewing the 1.0.2905 version of the Expression Encoder. Note that Microsoft still had previous beta versions and updates to those betas on their web site when I wrote this article (though, reportedly, they were soon to be removed), so it’s easy to download and even update the wrong application (not that I did, of course). You don’t want the Expression Media Encoder; the name has been shortened to Expression Encoder. You’ll know you have the wrong product if your interlaced source video doesn’t get deinterlaced during encoding.

If you’d like to customize your player templates, you’ll need Expression Blend 2, not the version of Expression Blend that ships with the initial version of Expression Studio, making it easy to start using the wrong application (not that I did, of course). You’ll know you have the wrong version if you get an error message when attempting to import the project file produced by Expression Encoder.

To view the files you produce, you’ll need the Silverlight plug-in, which worked well for me on both Mac (Safari and Firefox) and Windows. Your browser should tell you that you need the plug-in. It’s about 1.8MB for Windows, but 4.6MB for the Mac because it contains both PowerPC and Intel players.

With all this as background, let’s dive in.