Comment Feed for Channel 9 - New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/adf492e7-0849-481f-9dc0-6c8ded2b642b.png Channel 9 - New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today Hey folks, we deployed an update to Channel 9 today, bringing us two major changes: First, we have moved to a new video player, which has enabled us to start publishing our content using Silverlight Smooth Streaming. You’ll see more and more video encoded using this format as new content is run through the site, but for now you can check out the latest Hot Apps post for an example. Smooth Streaming not your cup of tea? You can jump into your profile and set your ‘Video Playback Preference’ to be either Auto (the default, we fall back through Smooth Streaming to Progressive and finally to HTML 5, all depending on the content we have and the browser you are running), Smooth Streaming (which is essentially the same as the default at this time), Progressive (same new player, but the buffer-and-play style of video that we’ve been using on Channel 9 for the past few years) or HTML 5 (which forces a HTML 5 player even if you have Silverlight installed) Second, we revamped the home page featured content area. The old style had some discoverability issues, it was hard to know what to click to go to the full view of a specific video and unless you hovered you didn’t get any of the description of the video (which can be really important to determine if you’d like to watch the video or not). Our new rotator is the result of working to solve both those issues and we hope you like it! Thanks for reading, and feel free to post feedback about these changes right here in the comments. en Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:20:36 GMT Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:20:36 GMT Rev9 Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today posted by Albin

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306305800000000 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:36:20 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306305800000000 Albin Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today HA! Watching Laura in slow motion is just wrong Smiley

These seem like logical changes, we'll see how it turns out.

posted by dentaku

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306333900000000 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:23:10 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306333900000000 dentaku Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today Silverlight Smooth, slowmo and replay are awesome! Now if only the player would save the audio volume setting for the slider :-/

Keep up the great work!

 

posted by gbrayut

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306344440000000 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:40:44 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306344440000000 gbrayut Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today posted by Mr Crash

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306412960000000 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:34:56 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306412960000000 Mr Crash Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today For some reason when it goes up to 4 lines of quality it doesn't look quite as crisp as if I play the high quality .WMV. At least I THINK it does.

I'm guessing the high quality smoothstreaming Silverlight videos are a tiny bit more compressed.

posted by dentaku

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306472510000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:14:11 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306472510000000 dentaku Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @Mr Crash: The HTML 5 player is whatever is built into the browser, and full screen is not a feature of every browser's html 5 player.

As far as the controls at the bottom animating and showing over the video, I'm sorry you find that annoying, but we added that specifically to the SMF player so that we didn't have to make the video player taller than the video stream and so that the controls would go away when you just wanted to watch the video and not make any changes using the controls.

posted by Duncanma

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306475460000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:19:06 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306475460000000 Duncanma Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @dentaku: That's possible, it is a compressed version from the source (the high quality *is* the source file, just renamed and uploaded), so even with exactly the same quality settings you'd see some degredation. Also the HQ WMV can be as large as 6Mbps, and our top smooth streaming file is around 3Mbps

posted by Duncanma

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306476600000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:21:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306476600000000 Duncanma Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today unfortunately, i liked the previous design because I could see all the main topics and stories at a glance.

The new design seems a step backward wrt design principles, where you are kind of hiding info. and wasting the user's time to click or wait for the timer to cycle through stories.

Discoverability is an issue but I'm guessing that your primary user comes directly to the website rather than search for topics and come here.

posted by sentientBot

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306503950000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:06:35 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306503950000000 sentientBot Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today Nevertheless, (optional/configurable) new features are always welcome. Keep up the good work!

posted by Allon Guralnek

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306878310000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 11:30:31 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306878310000000 Allon Guralnek Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today posted by Jesper

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306988960000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 14:34:56 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634306988960000000 Jesper Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @Jesper: definitely agree, we'll probably make some changes to the skin to increase the size of the timeline. Removing the slow-motion button would probably be the easiest, and I doubt it is all the useful for our content Smiley

 

posted by Duncanma

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307130110000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:30:11 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307130110000000 Duncanma Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @Allon Guralnek: Not all of the C9 videos require being able to clearly see fine details.

If I could toggle between IIS Smooth Streaming and old-style buffering on the video's page, that would be nice.

posted by zian

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307151920000000 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 19:06:32 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307151920000000 zian Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @Duncanma: ah i suspected it was the browser, thanks for verifying it.


About the controls: You misunderstand, It's the fade in/out animation part that is bugging me.I would be nice to have an option to turn it off.So when you move the mouse to where the controls are instead of a fade in animation the control would just popup / appear and when you move the mouse away from the controls it disappears.


That fade in / out animation blocks a part of the screen for a period of time, what if it was subtitles on the video then you would miss a part of them while that fade in/out thing is running and have to rewind and due to the fade in/out thing you have to rewind some extra seconds to compensate for it.


Media player classic homecinema does it like that.


( That fade in/out thing is just noice, bling that only wastes cpu cylces and kills the planet. ) 
BTW: the reply button have stopped working.

 

posted by Mr Crash

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307357880000000 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:49:48 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307357880000000 Mr Crash Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today wow this site is getting buggy, took me 4 edit retries until the formatting wanted to stick The site is probably using WPF with C#, *cough* WPF killed vs2010 *cough*

posted by Mr Crash

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307359100000000 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:51:50 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307359100000000 Mr Crash Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today posted by PriMinister

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307422410000000 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 02:37:21 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307422410000000 PriMinister Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @PriMinister. Huh? The point of SS is "highest" quality possible on your connection and client - not lowest. SS is best.  Your player is in control of the stream. Way it should have been done from beginning. But have it now. Smiley  Sure there may be some edges to polish as users hit them.

posted by staceyw

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307476400000000 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:07:20 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634307476400000000 staceyw Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today I can see how Smooth Streaming can be annoying for people with slow connections if the video contains text but it's great for us with fast connections.

posted by dentaku

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634308184670000000 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 23:47:47 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634308184670000000 dentaku Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today I can see why smooth streaming looks good on paper and why it's a logical choice, however, the reality for some of us is very different.

I have a very good connection (100 MBit/s down stream) with speeds ~20 MBit/s in practice. That's still very fast (2-3 MB/s). However, smooth streaming is not very optimistic or it's getting too little bandwidth from elsewhere because the result is very different from what I expect.

Very often, it's drops all the way down to the lowest possible bandwidth profile, and when it does, it's no longer possible to see anything. I don't get why it's being considered at all, as when it drops that low, it's no longer possible to distinguish text on screen and a lot of Channel 9 videos contain text!

I have good reasons to not like smooth streaming and there's nothing smooth about it. It's rugged and often preforming significantly worse. Why is that?

I'm located in Sweden, Stockholm. If you have any content edge servers there, please push content world wide!

 

posted by leidegre

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634308860260000000 Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:33:46 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634308860260000000 leidegre Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today @leidegre:I believe we do have edge servers near you, but have you tried just setting your profile to always provide the progressive version?

posted by Duncanma

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634309025410000000 Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:09:01 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634309025410000000 Duncanma Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today smooth streaming looks good!    

posted by Dorothy_Ballsa

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634309530410000000 Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:10:41 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634309530410000000 Dorothy_Ballsa Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today Stop the press... the player saves the volume setting now!!! Freaking sweet! I swear it wasn't doing that 12 days ago, so whoever fixed that is my hero Tongue Out Thank!

 

posted by gbrayut

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634317037950000000 Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:43:15 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634317037950000000 gbrayut Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today posted by Pat

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634321869870000000 Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:56:27 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/C9Team/New-Home-Page-Smooth-Streaming-added-to-Channel-9-today#c634321869870000000 Pat