SoapBox: What. How. Why. (Channel 9)

By now, you've heard of MSN's Soapbox video site where you can upload your own videos and share your creativity and message with the world, for free, etc...

Well, that sounds happy and nice, but we want to know how Soapbox actually works, how it's architected/designed for scale, and why they made it the way they did. Who better to talk to about this stuff then Soapbox development lead Rafael Sagula? Tune in.

Check out the Soapbox video on 10. You can find invites there too Smiley

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UnquaLe

Oct 31, 2006 at 2:27 AM

That's cool guys !
I wanna now that is there any library to stream videos on FlashPlayer ?
Why Microsoft choose the FlashPlayer instead of Media player ?

Thank you guys for this cool site.
jsampsonPC SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

Oct 31, 2006 at 4:31 AM

Does the soapbox team have a blog online? I have been reporting a couple videos over and over again, and they have not been addressed - I would like to speak with somebody who has some "pull".

I'd hate to see Soapbox become just like the other video-sharing sites and have nothing more than young women shaking their breasts around in a suggestive manner.
BillP

Oct 31, 2006 at 6:42 AM

I like the look and feel of soapbox, well designed.
I think, though, that it will be difficult to compete with MySpace and YouTube. Even Google realized this and bought up YouTube.
HumanCompiler Now with more program management

Oct 31, 2006 at 7:35 AM

UnquaLe wrote:

Why Microsoft choose the FlashPlayer instead of Media player ?

As mentioned in the video, when you view the site in IE, it uses Media Player and when you view the site in anything else, it uses the Flash player.
HumanCompiler Now with more program management

Oct 31, 2006 at 7:38 AM

jsampsonPC wrote:

Does the soapbox team have a blog online?

Not sure if this was mentioned in the video or not, but...

http://soapboxteam.spaces.live.com
nektar

Oct 31, 2006 at 9:19 AM

Now I am confused. Why isn't it called Windows Live Video?
Charles Welcome Change

Oct 31, 2006 at 9:40 AM

nektar wrote:

Now I am confused. Why isn't it called Windows Live Video?

Maybe a Soapbox API in the Sky will be Live Video In terms of your justifiable confusion: Live is not a replacement for MSN... Think of Live as a set of services in the cloud. MSN remains as, well, MSN...

C
LaBomba Summer

Oct 31, 2006 at 10:22 AM

This does not use heavy amounts of ajax it appears...so it's not live.
mawcc Make it so

Oct 31, 2006 at 11:19 AM

jsampsonPC wrote:

I'd hate to see Soapbox become just like the other video-sharing sites and have nothing more than young women shaking their breasts around in a suggestive manner.

Sorry to ruin your day, but removing these videos would diminish the chances of Soapbox beeing successful considerably. So I guess it won't happen.
TommyCarlier Widen your gaze

Oct 31, 2006 at 12:30 PM

I like the idea of integrating C9 with SoapBox. Niners can create videos and upload them to SoapBox, after which they could magically appear on C9.
Charles Welcome Change

Oct 31, 2006 at 1:00 PM

TommyCarlier wrote:

I like the idea of integrating C9 with SoapBox. Niners can create videos and upload them to SoapBox, after which they could magically appear on C9.

Me too Keep in mind that this is highly speculative at this point. No promises, maketh I.
C
jsampsonPC SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

Oct 31, 2006 at 1:24 PM

Charles wrote:

TommyCarlier wrote:I like the idea of integrating C9 with SoapBox. Niners can create videos and upload them to SoapBox, after which they could magically appear on C9.

Me too Keep in mind that this is highly speculative at this point. No promises, maketh I.
C

Nothing more than using a Niner's Soapbox Submitted-Videos RSS Feed, no?
jsampsonPC SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

Oct 31, 2006 at 1:25 PM

mawcc wrote:

jsampsonPC wrote:I'd hate to see Soapbox become just like the other video-sharing sites and have nothing more than young women shaking their breasts around in a suggestive manner.

Sorry to ruin your day, but removing these videos would diminish the chances of Soapbox beeing successful considerably. So I guess it won't happen.

Sadly, I agree - so I doubt the "Report" feature will do any good for a long time, if ever. If Microsoft is willing to allow this stuff on their Soapbox in order to gain popularity, it speaks volumes...
BillP

Oct 31, 2006 at 1:29 PM

I think there's a 100MB upload limit, but no limit on video length or number of videos a user can upload. Will the 100MB limit be increased in the future?
CodeMonkey666 Cylons.. Why debugging matters

Oct 31, 2006 at 1:39 PM

Please invest in a BlueTooth mic. The sound quality leaves much to be desired.

The content was great! Keep up the good work!
jsampsonPC SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

Oct 31, 2006 at 2:35 PM

CodeMonkey666 wrote:

Please invest in a BlueTooth mic. The sound quality leaves much to be desired.

The content was great! Keep up the good work!

I haven't watched this video completely through yet but you have a good point - regardless how good the video is here, a bluetooth mic would be sweet, so long as you can get one for everybody being interviewed, although the sound-quality is typically pretty good....nevermind, my zeal has gotten out too quickly, I'm on the fence with this one bah, do whatever - something tells me that you guys want these videos to be as awesome as we do ...
papavb

Oct 31, 2006 at 7:31 PM

TommyCarlier wrote:

I like the idea of integrating C9 with SoapBox. Niners can create videos and upload them to SoapBox, after which they could magically appear on C9.

a channel9 channel?
cosminb

Nov 01, 2006 at 12:41 AM

Nevermind...
devnull

Nov 01, 2006 at 2:17 AM

very cool, what is the name of the transcoding engine used? i'm working on a app that requires mpeg 2 to be transcoded to quicktime/mp4 and various other formats, using 3ivx at the moment, but would be nice to use a trascoder that can accept any type of input.
jason818_253.33 Yippi skippy

Nov 01, 2006 at 10:46 AM

papavb wrote:

TommyCarlier wrote: I like the idea of integrating C9 with SoapBox. Niners can create videos and upload them to SoapBox, after which they could magically appear on C9.

a channel9 channel?

Soap Box has a Channel 9 tag. Theres a start.
Jasp This is me looking happy

Nov 01, 2006 at 2:42 PM

Soapbox rocks. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work on Vista.
Charles Welcome Change

Nov 01, 2006 at 4:38 PM

Jasp wrote:

Soapbox rocks. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work on Vista.

What seems to be the problem? What part of Soapbox is not working? What build are you using? What error messages if any are you getting? Which browser are you using? Etc...
C