10-4 Episode 1: Working with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC

Thanks for the feedback Lawman and Chad - we had conflicting feedback on this one but this is something we'll revisit for future episodes. Metallica is going to be disappointed, though; they had signed on to do an exclusive album. I'll try to let them down gently.

dnjake - while it's true that Microsoft does not support Virtual PC on Vista Home Premium (or Home Basic), I have definitely talked to several users who have used it successfully on those platforms. You will get a message that says you're running on an operating system that's not supported, but you should be able to click past that and use it without any trouble.

You're right that not all of the functionality is there yet. Much more will be available in the next pre-release.

Brian

Thanks, Chris!

So that's 1 for the music... and 4 against. I will see if we can strike a balance. Maybe music during the transitions but not during the times that there's voiceover? We'll see what we can do and try to find a way of pleasing everybody.

You've asked an excellent question about the file sizes. Basically, the way that Channel 9 (and 8, 10, Edge, etc.) accepts videos for upload from guys like me is through a program called MagicFolder that the EvNet team (Sampy, Duncan, Erik, et al.) built and maintain. MagicFolder, until recently, used to require all "Videos" to be encoded using a 2500kbps profile. Unfortunately while that profile worked well for live action footage, it doesn't work very well for screen captures. Hence for screen captures, they allowed you to upload whatever video format you want and tag it as a "Screencast" - but the tradeoff was that it wouldn't be converted into Zune, MP4, MP3, WMA, etc. It wouldn't be converted into those formats because the process they used to produce those formats required a known input - hence the 2500kbps profile.

But a couple of weeks ago, EvNet adopted Expression Encoder for their encoding pipeline which is much more flexible with the file input. Hence I can now get the best of both worlds; I can encode my screencasts using a profile which is really designed to display screencasts in a high-quality but efficient (file size) format, and MagicFolder will still convert the file to the other file formats (Zune, MP4, MP3, WMA, etc.).  It's a really awesome option and I applaud the EvNet guys for enabling this feature!

Now what I suspect is that the files you're seeing which are 500MB to 1GB in range are still encoded at the old 2500kbps setting. One of the great things about Channel 9 is that we allow people from all over the company to produce and upload content. One of the downsides, however, is that not everybody is an expert at choosing the right encoding profile to match their content type and tune that balance of quality vs. file size. I have been doing this for several years now, and every time I shoot a new format it's still a learning curve to get it right. Hopefully over time we can educate more content creators on how to best shoot and encode their content. You can always feel free to post comments on their videos and tell them to buy me lunch, and in return I'll help them up their game.

Thanks for watching, and for commenting!

Brian Keller

Thanks for taking the time to elaborate, Mexilus. But the term "evangelist" used to describe our profession has been around for a very long time and is used by several companies across the industry, not just Microsoft. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_evangelist. In fact, the beloved Guy Kawasaki was an evangelist for Apple.

It's true that the title is unfortunately confused from time to time with that of religious evangelists. But you can say the same thing about several titles. For example, do you think that the Secretary of State is the person responsible for scheduling meetings and taking notes for the President? Is somebody with a "doctorate" in literary studies somebody you would go to if you broke your leg? Is the captain of a football team responsible for driving the boat?

Many words and titles have multiple meanings. "Evangelist" is one of those words. Unless the tech industry decides collectively to redefine the genre, I suspect we'll have technical evangelists as long as we have companies who produce and sell technology.

Thanks, Andrgin - actually I don't know how to change the Alt Gr key. Can you please elaborate? Feel free to point us to a URL if this is already documented somewhere. Since I live in the US and travel with my laptop when I leave the country I haven't had to work around this for myself, but I'm very interested in learning more.

Brian

Thanks, Josh!

Thanks, maxt3r! Our goal is to publish a new episode every Wednesday.

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to detail that andrgin - I learn something new every day.

Sorry Tom, I didn't hear a word you said - let me turn down this background music... hold on a sec...

Don't worry - we've received plenty of feedback on the music. It's funny because a few people like it but the majority seem to dislike it. Jason Olson is working on this week's 10-4 episode and is taking that feedback into account. Hopefully you'll like the next one better, and if not please continue to tell us how we can make 'em better for you each week. We aim to please!

Mouseover "Downloads" in the post above. We make several formats available.

Lostasif -
Did you use the download manager? This error is pretty straightforward, it means you have a corrupt download.
Brian

Every single point covered in this video is also available via the blog articles linked from the body of the video post.

Brian

Thanks, Jack! I use Camtasia for most of my stuff these days. Running v5.0 but hoping I can buy a license for v6.0 soon.