There is a new build of Expression Encoder 4 available that fixes some issues related to Screen Capture:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/expressionencoder/archive/2010/07/31/10044506.aspx 

It is also possible to download the screen capture CODEC as a separate package which enables you to open screen capture files in other tools:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=71895f93-d804-4b70-8440-6b726ea0f12c

Lastly, Steve Marx listened to my call for an Expression Encoder publishing plugin version of his Adaptive Streaming->Azure Blob Storage work and has made one:

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/publishing-adaptive-streaming-video-from-expression-encoder-to-windows-azure-blobs

Cool stuff.

When I was working on the Expression Encoder Team we would get a number of questions about the possibility of hosting IIS Smooth Streaming files on Windows Azure blob storage.  The Azure Publishing Plugin that I wrote supported file upload for regular non streaming files but for ISMV content, the service would have needed to support IIS Media Services in order for it to play back successfully.

MP4 Explorer was a possible way of converting a Smooth Streaming file back to multiple file chunks which could be uploaded to Azure that would play just fine but this was a somewhat clunky (chunky?) process.

Steve Marx, on the Azure team, has gone one step better and written an upload tool which takes a ISMV file and chunks it on the fly as it is uploaded to Azure:

Blog post:

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/smooth-streaming-with-windows-azure-blobs-and-cdn

Code:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/smoothstreamingazure

Now, all Steve needs to do is update the publishing plugin code to use this and there would be an integrated experience inside of Expression Encoder

Even better, the IIS and Azure guys should make their stuff play together and just support Smooth Streaming directly in Blob storage.  Here’s hopin’

I’ve been monitoring my Azure bills closely of late as the service is now costing real money; in the process I’ve discovered this obvious but potentially nasty issue to be aware of.

Windows Azure Compute Hours are measured in the amount of time your Web Role (or Worker) is running.  That means if it is started, you are being billed even if you have a live site with little or no traffic.  Fine, I understand that - would be happier if it was for actual measured CPU cycles but.. whatever.  However, I was somewhat shocked to see my compute hours consumed for the month to be way higher than I had expected by a long way.  After some investigation and thought, the reason turned out to be obvious.

For each web role, a project can have two running deployments.. one for staging and one for production.  The pattern is typically to deploy your app to staging, test and then rotate live to production (and any existing production back to staging).  The problem is, if you then fail to stop the staging deployment, it will be sitting there cranking away and consuming Compute Hours.  Oops.. I had assumed I would only be billed per hour per role. 

Also, be aware that any other old test projects you have lying around in your account that happen to be started are also costing you since, again,

Lesson(s) learned.

David has done a great series of blog posts taking you from no Azure account to video embedded on your blog:

• Provisioning Windows Azure – how to sign up for and set up a Windows Azure subscription.
• Setting up Windows Azure for video storage – how to create a storage account.
• Creating and publishing a Silverlight video to Windows Azure – how to use Expression Encoder to encode and publish a video to Windows Azure.
• Embedding a Silverlight video in a blog – how to use Windows Live Writer to embed a Silverlight video hosted on Windows Azure in your blog.

Good job, Sir!

I just pushed an update to the plugin to Codeplex with the following features:

• Support for updated Azure Blob Storage Library from November 09 Azure SDK enabling
  • Upload progress is reported
  • Very large files can be uploaded since a chunk-based upload scheme is used.  Chunks are validated with an MD5 hash.
  • Uploads can be restarted in the case where a failure occurs or if an upload was previously cancelled
• Standard settings enhancements
  • Preview from origin server or using CDN
  • Display of code snippet for inserting published video project into web page
• Advanced settings
  • Preview and delete published projects

The updated plugin now offers equivalent functionality to the (now deprecated) Silverlight Streaming Publishing plugin.

To install, unzip the archive and drop the two dlls into

%programfilesx86%\Microsoft Expression\Encoder 3\Plugins.

The plugin is also fully supported by the Expression Encoder Powershell cmdlet as I’ll illustrate in my next post that describes my personal process for migrating existing Silverlight Streaming video projects to Windows Azure Blob Storage.

Hope this Helps.