Building NBCOlympics.com with Silverlight | The Continuum Show

Dovella
Go Microsoft !!!!!!!

Only for US Sad

figuerres
???

I will watch the video later but a question:

the NBC olympics web site silverlight player does not seem to have the option of "ESC for Fullscreen" why not?

Eric.Schmidt
Olympics Dude

In reply to Dovella

#Aug 7th, 2008 @ 2:06 PM

Sorry Dovella, NBC owns and manages the licensing rights for the areas that they have purchaed from the IOC e.g. in the case the US.

Have checked to see if your regional broadcaster is delivering content to the web?

Also, Google is delivering content (a limited set of video & not in the same video quality as NBC) for 77 countries - but I can't locate the list to see if Italy is on the list.

-Eric

Eric.Schmidt
Olympics Dude

In reply to figuerres

#Aug 7th, 2008 @ 3:02 PM

Figuerres,

Sounds like you are hungry for some full screen content Smiley The implmentation of the NBC Silverlight player has a mode called Enhanced, that will take you into a fuller 16:9 screen. We don't go true full screen for a few reasons, one of which we don't want to stretch the video. The resolution you see in most cases is native aspect and size of the source encode - thus it looks super clean, no blocking, etc.

Make sense?

Also in enhanced mode you can do PIP and live commentary - enjoy!

-Eric

stevo_
Human after all

In reply to Eric.Schmidt

#Aug 7th, 2008 @ 3:35 PM

Cool stuff, gutted I don't get to use it..

The technology is interesting, obviously you don't want to give to much away about it all but is media streaming services in charge of sending the bitrate appropriate for the resolution thats being requested (plus bandwidth availability etc)? or does it just push the same resolution of video ti the player no matter the size (ie, in enhanced mode or not), or do you need to specifically transition to a different feed that is at the appropriate size?

I get the feeling these are probably some of the basics of windows media streaming services, so I may well be asking a bad question here..

Eric.Schmidt
Olympics Dude

In reply to stevo_

#Aug 7th, 2008 @ 3:47 PM

For Live events, you get fixed stream of 650k in pop-up and enhanced mode.

For "Rewind", you get 650k chunked HTTP bits. This is less CPU intensive than streaming. If you are having issues rendering 650k, we swtich to lower bit rate chunks of 300k. You will see a message on the screen if this happens.

For "Encore" (from TV and certain highlight reels), you get a variing range of bit rates depeding on the health of your PC and downstream bandwidth (like I noted in the video). This switching happens seemlessly i.e. no flicker or "stream" switch. You will notice the video quality imporve or degrade dynamically depending on your situation. We will have more to talk about this as we get through the event.

Make sense?

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

Nice. I look forward to watching the casts on SL. Today, it looked like some problems. I kept getting error finding videos. Maybe a server was down.

aL_
Rx ftw

why oh why do you encode in 4:3 aspect ratio...

there is aboslutly No reason to do that! now on my 16:9 display the video is letterboxed even though its recorded in 16:9

this a rookie mistake by any standards but c9 does this quite alot Sad

please Please stop encoding in the black bars.. just encode in the same resolution as you record in.. its not that hard Smiley

AdamKinney
Agent of Change

In reply to aL_

#Aug 8th, 2008 @ 3:35 AM

I'd love to post videos in 16:9 ratio, but the Channel9 system doesn't support it yet. They've been focusing on other areas, but a few of the hurdles to overcome include a flexible media player, the larger file size and updating the whole encoding pipeline. So its not that I wanted to include the black bars, its how the system is setup right now.

I'll play around with it, I could eventually post an extra link to a 16:9 video.