Updating webcast recordings...
I have received a few requests from folks about a bad webcast recording. I've been told that there are some problems with the recording for:
Building Workflow Services (WF+WCF) with Visual Studio 2008
Additionally, I have received some requests for better quality recordings. I have little control over the quality of the recordings for my live webcasts because I broadcast the Live Meeting desktop sharing at a low color depth in order to make sure all attendees have a good overall viewing experience. You'd be amazed at the varying levels of bandwidth people connect with. Although Live Meeting allows much higher video broadcast quality, I have not had success using it for a broad Internet audience. Inevitably, someone lets us know that they are having issues with desktop sharing screen refresh rates. This is almost always a bandwidth issue on their end. The latest Live Meeting client may have gotten better at this, but I haven't risked trying it. I've stuck with the lowest common denominator approach to keep things simple/working. If anyone out there has some tips/tricks to improve this, let me know! Unfortunately, the side effect of my lowest common denominator approach is that the recording quality is low. Apparently, the quality is so low that some people refuse to watch it:(. I suspect this has to do with the post webcast video processing. In the future, I will try the higher quality broadcast again.
I just recorded my Adding Mapping Capabilities to your Applications with Virtual Earth and ASP.NET AJAX session again in preparation for a CD the Virtual Earth team is putting together. The recording quality will be the same as my channel 9 screencasts since I used Camtasia Studio to for the new recording. The recording is basically a refresh of my standard VE programming session updated to 6.1 & incorporating the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense helper (see Updated Virtual Earth Map Control demo code for more details). I am still trying to figure out how to replace the original recording on the Live Meeting servers with the new one. Once I do, I will let everyone know it is available.
I cannot record every webcast again. However, I plan on doing a few as my schedule permits. Specifically, I will start with the one people have reported has issues. From there, I will update the ones I know had some demo glitches. So far, the webcasts I plan on recording again are:
Building Workflow Services (WF+WCF) with Visual Studio 2008
Overview of the Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview
Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET
You can find a complete list of my recorded webcasts in the My Recorded Webcasts list on my Windows Live Space. While I am at it, I figured I would try out the idea of creating a survey and letting those who read my blog pick which ones I record again. If you are interested, please click here to take the survey. I will prioritize the time I have to record new versions based on the survey results. The list of webcasts in the survey are only the webcasts I have personally presented. Furthermore, I've only included the more recent ones since recording older content would take significantly more time and effort:(.
-Marc