Posting Podcasts/Screencasts using Silverlight 1.0 RC

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Sorry, it has been a little quite on the blog. I was on vacation last week and training down in Redmond the week before. As a bonus, I've included a good UX design example from my travel last week at the end of the post.

Quite a few people asked me about how to post screencasts/podcasts using Silverlight 1.0 RC on their blogs and streaming the digital content using Silverlight Streaming. There are great posts from Catherine Heller and Morten on how to post Silverlight content, but I thought a Silverlight screencast to answer the very question should be very effective. Please see below screencast: a walkthrough tutorial on posting a podcast using Silverlight 1.0 RC.

Major Steps

Step 1: record the screencast (e.g. Camtasia)

Step 2: encode the screencast media file in Expression Media Encoder (EME)

Step 3: output Silverlight project (i.e. screencast player) from EME and compress appropriate project files

Step 4: upload compressed project files to Silverlight Streaming

Step 5: embed screencast/podcast in a blog post

Useful Code Fragments

manifest.xml file has the following code:

<SilverlightApp>
<version>1.0</version>
<loadFunction>StartWithParent</loadFunction>
<jsOrder>
<js>MicrosoftAjax.js</js>
<js>BasePlayer.js</js>
<js>PlayerStrings.js</js>
<js>player.js</js>
<js>StartPlayer.js</js>
</jsOrder>
</SilverlightApp>

iframe object code:

<iframe src=https://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/AccountID/AppName/iframe.html scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="500" height="400"></iframe>

Replace the AccountID with your Silverlight Streaming account ID and replace the AppName with your application name. In my case, it's "PostingPodcast."

Now the bonus...

I passed a nice little town called "Picton" on my way traveling to Sandbanks last week. There is gourmet hot dog restaurant called "The Budda Dog" (see their logo below). Isn't it cute and clearly expresses what it is! :) In the restaurant, they have an efficient way of taking orders. All types of hot dog sauces and toppings have barcodes associated with them, so the waitresses just need to screen the menus to take orders. The orders are shown on the computer right away. Interesting solution, both cheap to implement and flexible to change.

Budda Dog  an efficient way to take orders