Remy Pairault: Test driving Silverlight Streaming with the Halo3 video trailers (Channel 9)

Remy Pairault: Test driving Silverlight Streaming with the Halo3 video trailers

Posted: Sep 11, 2007 at 11:41 AM

By: Charles

17,565 Views

18 Comments

Video format

Option selected may change based on video formats available and browser capability.

Auto

Use our suggested format for this video.

Smooth Streaming

Adaptive bitrate streaming - little buffering but lower video quality at times of low bandwidth. Silverlight 5 required

Progressive

Traditional buffered video format. Silverlight 5 required

HTML5

For browsers that support H.264 MP4 or WebM video playback such as:
IE9+, Firefox 4+, Chrome 5+, or Safari 4+.

Flash

For browsers that have the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed.

Have you had a chance to see the Halo3 video trailers? Did you know they’re hosted on Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live?
Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale media-rich Silverlight applications.Catherine Heller sat down with Remy Pairault, Senior Program Manager for Silverlight Streaming, to discuss the new service and how it’s being used to host the new Halo3 video trailers. (You'll see one of the videos playing on the screen next to Remy during the interview).

Here are time markers for specific conversation topics:

00:00:48 - Remy describes Silverlight Streaming , the scenarios (00:01:05) and benefits (00:01:28)
00:02:31 - Steps involved in preparing a Silverlight app for hosting 00:05:05 - Manual upload using the Silverlight Streaming administration site
00:06:04 - Using the Silverlight Streaming REST API to upload programmatically
00:06:27 - Discussion of Silverlight Streaming and Windows Live ID
00:08:42 - Publishing video without writing any code,
00:09:34 - Using Expression Encoder to prepare the video
00:10:54 - Publishing a video to a blog using a Windows Live Writer (plug-in developed by James Clarke)
00:12:21 - Discussion of the usage costs and terms of use; Remy summarizes the usage limits (00:15:53)
00:17:42 - Discussion of the Halo3 video trailers
00:21:47 - Evolution of the service , how it fits into the Windows Live Platform (00:24:04) and developer resources

Additional Resources:

Silverlight Streaming on Windows Live Dev
QuickStart: Package a Video File Using Expression
and http://dev.live.com : the source for all things developer-related around Windows Live!

Follow the Discussion

Oops, something didn't work.

Try again?

Getting "follow" information

Stop following these comments

Start following these comments

Removing your "follow"

Setting up your "follow"

Subscribe to this comments

"The size of these videos is F____G pathetic!"

Still so, yeah. <sigh>

When Charles promised to post 512Kbit/sec Downloads I hoped this would be a viable solution. When I checked if he had kept his promise and I saw the 183KByte size of this subject I thought: "Dang, NO, he did not. Still have to wait."

But then I began to calculate, and, <arrrgh>, 183KB *IS* 512Kbs, which still *IS* prohibitive!

So, I´m in for the next round of negotiations (if Charles will listen another time), begging for these 212Kbs of Webcasts. But if you calculate, this Screen codec must be really good VBR (Variable Bit Rate) and actually works at an average of 20Kbs (twenty Kilo*bits*/sec!!!) and peaks only briefly when slides / whole screen contents change.

For my taste it´d be absolutely sufficient to see (Anders H.´s and other "interesting" <g>) faces and whiteboarding and zoomed close snippets in 320x240, 10 frames/sec... if this results in, say 50MB!!!

Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarles!
Thanks
G.

Follow
Oops, something didn't work.

Try again?

Sign In to be begin to follow these comments

What does this mean?
Following an item on Channel 9 allows you to watch for new content and comments that you are interested in. You need to be signed in to Channel 9 to use this feature.

Getting "follow" information

Stop following these comments

Start following these comments

What does this mean?
Following an item on Channel 9 allows you to watch for new content and comments that you are interested in and view them all on your notifications page.

Removing your "follow"

Setting up your "follow"

Did you know you can
sign up for email notifications?
- Subscribe to this comments

Bas It finds lightbulbs.

Sep 11, 2007 at 1:16 PM

I've seen the Halo 3 trailers, but apart from the live action one, the sound was horribly out of sync for each one. I was impressed with how there was no noticable buffering for such high def trailers, but what's up with that?
BlackTiger If you stumbled and fell down, it doesn't mean yet, that you're going in the wrong direction.

Sep 11, 2007 at 8:36 PM

Hmmm... Up to 80% CPU utilization during "playback"...
CPU T2500, Intel GMA 950 aka "iCrap"...

Something is wrong with last "technologies"...
Minh WOOH! WOOH!

Sep 11, 2007 at 9:48 PM

Bas wrote:

I've seen the Halo 3 trailers, but apart from the live action one, the sound was horribly out of sync for each one. I was impressed with how there was no noticable buffering for such high def trailers, but what's up with that?

Bas, when you do Add/Remove Programs -> Silverlight -> Support Info ... what version # do you get. Mine is 1.0.20816 and the vids seem fine. I used to get out-of-sync audio too. But now, it's OK.

Of course, I'm running in a VPC. I should check my real partition.
BlackTiger If you stumbled and fell down, it doesn't mean yet, that you're going in the wrong direction.

Sep 11, 2007 at 11:29 PM

Constant 70% CPU utilization on AMD X2 4200+ and ATI R2600XT...

Bloody hell...
Baal Me :-)

Sep 11, 2007 at 11:40 PM

I have no problems with CPU utilization on Vista (HW = Intel Core 2 (2.4GHz) + 4GB RAM + GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB) or sound / video sync

Bas It finds lightbulbs.

Sep 12, 2007 at 12:13 AM

Minh wrote:

Bas wrote:
I've seen the Halo 3 trailers, but apart from the live action one, the sound was horribly out of sync for each one. I was impressed with how there was no noticable buffering for such high def trailers, but what's up with that?

Bas, when you do Add/Remove Programs -> Silverlight -> Support Info ... what version # do you get. Mine is 1.0.20816 and the vids seem fine. I used to get out-of-sync audio too. But now, it's OK.

I installed the RTM version, I'll have to check which version it is when I get home. And wether it still goes out of sync, or if that was just a first time thing.

Bas It finds lightbulbs.

Sep 12, 2007 at 10:38 AM

Nope, same version, and still horribly out of synch. When I watch the trailer, I still see those kids talking about "Who's up there" when I hear the first explosion.

Pretty bad showcase for Silverlight if this happens to a lot of people, methinks. That live action thing is still perfectly in sync, though. Weird.
Minh WOOH! WOOH!

Sep 12, 2007 at 1:57 PM

Bas wrote:

Nope, same version, and still horribly out of synch. When I watch the trailer, I still see those kids talking about "Who's up there" when I hear the first explosion.

Pretty bad showcase for Silverlight if this happens to a lot of people, methinks. That live action thing is still perfectly in sync, though. Weird.

That's incredible. For kicks, I did a google search for "silverlight out of sync" and read through the first 2 pages of search results. About 50% of those links were of people complaining video/audio out of sync. Do you know how many MS responses there were? ZERO.

The only function of Silverlight 1.0 is to play video, and failing at that, how can developers build on it?
Frogs69

Sep 12, 2007 at 4:57 PM

Either version of the Silverlight runtime should work fine with this player.
Frogs69

Sep 12, 2007 at 5:09 PM

This thread is the first where I see such issues reported about video and sound being played back our of sync on the Halo 3 trailers. Thanks for bringing it up. I never encountered this issue myself and I watched all the trailers _many_ times.

It is also worth noting that all the high res trailers were encoded according to the same spec with the same bit rate, and are fecthed exactly the same way by the player.

I reported it for additional testing specifically in this area.
Bas It finds lightbulbs.

Sep 13, 2007 at 12:52 AM

[quote user="Frogs69"]This thread is the first where I see such issues reported about video and sound being played back our of sync on the Halo 3 trailers. quote]

Apparently we're not alone.

Notice that people are reporting this issue with all sorts of videos (including the FOX trailers). Quite a letdown.
Minh WOOH! WOOH!

Sep 13, 2007 at 9:35 AM

Frogs69 wrote:

This thread is the first where I see such issues reported about video and sound being played back our of sync on the Halo 3 trailers

Frogs69, if you're an MS employee, then that's a bad sign.

Perhaps, Silverlight 1.0 is literally the typical MS vee-one-point-oh product.
Frogs69

Sep 13, 2007 at 10:57 PM

Bas wrote:

[quote user="Frogs69"]This thread is the first where I see such issues reported about video and sound being played back our of sync on the Halo 3 trailers. quote]

Apparently we're not alone.

Notice that people are reporting this issue with all sorts of videos (including the FOX trailers). Quite a letdown.

Indeed... I performed the search right after reading the posts in this thread, and I saw if for myself...
gue

Sep 15, 2007 at 4:51 PM

Hey there, Charles,
as "promised", here´s your PITA.

So this special Screen codec for the Webcasts must do some great (VBR) work!

Hardly could believe the math of Windows Calculator <grin>, but 512Kbs DO add up to 183MB for ~50 minutes!!!

Still WAY too much for casual downloads!

TIA for any further reductions!
G.
malcolms

Sep 18, 2007 at 12:00 AM

The size of these videos is F____G pathetic!
gue

Sep 19, 2007 at 4:39 AM

"The size of these videos is F____G pathetic!"

Still so, yeah. <sigh>

When Charles promised to post 512Kbit/sec Downloads I hoped this would be a viable solution. When I checked if he had kept his promise and I saw the 183KByte size of this subject I thought: "Dang, NO, he did not. Still have to wait."

But then I began to calculate, and, <arrrgh>, 183KB *IS* 512Kbs, which still *IS* prohibitive!

So, I´m in for the next round of negotiations (if Charles will listen another time), begging for these 212Kbs of Webcasts. But if you calculate, this Screen codec must be really good VBR (Variable Bit Rate) and actually works at an average of 20Kbs (twenty Kilo*bits*/sec!!!) and peaks only briefly when slides / whole screen contents change.

For my taste it´d be absolutely sufficient to see (Anders H.´s and other "interesting" <g>) faces and whiteboarding and zoomed close snippets in 320x240, 10 frames/sec... if this results in, say 50MB!!!

Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarles!
Thanks
G.
malcolms

Sep 20, 2007 at 1:57 AM

Must be Charles laziness or secretly owns an ISP.
Yankee

Apr 04, 2008 at 10:37 PM

BlackTiger wrote:

Constant 70% CPU utilization on AMD X2 4200+ and ATI R2600XT...

Bloody hell...

Maybe you have some problems? On an Athlon 2500+, 1 GB RAM, GF5200 works well.

Remove this comment

Remove this thread

Comments Closed

Comments have been closed since this content was published more than 30 days ago, but if you'd like to continue the conversation, please create a new thread in our Forums,
or Contact Us and let us know.