Using Expression Encoder and .Net to overlay text on your videos

Sure Windows Live Move Maker 2011 (and other many other tools too) can overlay text onto your videos, but what if you wanted to do it programmatically? Maybe to watermark your videos, or stamp them based on some of their metadata, or say you've got a security camera capturing video where you'd like put some text on the video automatically. Just think of the cool stuff you could do... (must... finish post and not start coding... must... control... self... the IDE is calling me... must finish...

Wade Wegner shows us how in Overlay Text On Video Using Expression Encoder 4

"I recently built an application where I wanted to write some arbitrary text onto a video.  I was using Expression Encoder 4 and had a difficult time finding some examples and documentation, aside from some basic MSDN documentation on the MediaItem class.  I was eventually able to figure it out, but it took a little time.  Even though the end result is not particularly glamorous, I thought I’d save you some time and share what I learned.

The first thing to recognize is that you have to create a Bitmap of the text you want to overlay.  This Bitmap is then overlayed on to the MediaItem.  So, first things first, create your Bitmap.  Here’s an approach:

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Here’s a few more links you might find interesting:

• MSDN Library, Expression Encoder 4 SDK Code samples
• Download Microsoft Expression Encoder 4
• Expression Encoder forum

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