Silverlight Test, Mac users?

Microsoft recently releaased a cross-browser and more importantly cross platform plug-in called silverlight. This will allow support for playback of WMV files on many different browsers or the Mac platform, least that's what the documentation says. It's similar to flash except much more ability, more importantly at least IMO is the WMV suport. Windows users will be able to create their masterpiece in Windows Movie Maker or other editor encode to WMV and upload directly to here without any further intervention by me having to reencode it to make it friendly for the Mac community or those not using IE.

Currently it only supports WMV, WMA and MP3 so Mac users are still slightly out in the cold but Ihopefully other formats like MOV or Divx will be supported in the future.

I want to use this for embedding video and audio content here, the only other realistic option is flash and chances are no one is going to have flash encoder.

Anyhow I have test page up, this will require that you install the plug-in from microsoft if you don't alredy have it. Chances are this is going to become popular so you're going to run into it sooner later.

What I would really like is feedback from the Mac users if it works or not.

[dead link removed]

Note that the file I used here is 500kbps so you'll need cable or fast DSL connection.

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More info here: http://silverlight.net/

Sorry Rich but Microsoft stuff is known to be buggy and full of security holes .

I'll install after it's out there a little longer there seems to be very little discussion about it on the Apple site and Apple support doesn't acknowledge it . I prefer to use as little stuff if any from them as possible.

I use a program called Flip4Mac to view WMV files in Quicktime

Youtube is as cross platform as anyone could ever need too

Richard:
Works as advertised! 1mB Download... no problem on MAC OS.

coalstoves wrote:Sorry Rich but Microsoft stuff is known to be buggy and full of security holes .

As in? Windows is big target which is why most most vulnerabilities that surface are for the windows platform. Just because you're using a Mac doesn't mean anything. There's simply no one targeting it, been proven time and again its no less safe or buggy than WinX. Just offer somone some incentive like $10k and what do you know less than 12 hours later there's exploit found:

"I was up all night. I haven't slept yet," Dai Zovi said around 5:45 PST. "I sat down at 10 last night and by 7 a.m. I had a working vulnerability."

http://securitywatch.eweek.com/apple/ma ... ntest.html

Youtube is as cross platform as anyone could ever need too

The issue there is you need video encoded as .flv , only way I can practically do that is to go the youtube route and encode it myself server side. Lots or resources needed for that... With this any Windows users will be able to encode on their machine and upload and it will be viewable by anyone. Done deal. If they extend support to other formats more common to the Mac platform then it will be that much easier for them as well.

The adtional benefit here is the user has control over the quality of the video, trying to fit video into a all-in-one size just doesn't work and is one of the reasons you see such poor conversions on youtube for a lot of videos.

Just to add this not only only cross platform but cross browser. It's nearly impossible to embed video content other than flash and get consistent results.

nwaelder wrote:Richard:
Works as advertised! 1mB Download... no problem on MAC OS.

Nice.

Richard,

On a stock G4 500 w/10.4.11 1.5GB RAM and Safari 3.0.4 video was choppy like a slideshow on slow speed, the audio was fine.
Firefox was the same.
On a stock G4 iBook w/10.3.9 it would not install because it needs 10.4.8 or higher.
I do not have a G5 in the shop now, but i'm sure the chop will be gone with a better video card and faster processor.

CapeCoaler wrote:Richard,

On a stock G4 500 w/10.4.11 1.5GB RAM and Safari 3.0.4 video was choppy like a slideshow on slow speed, the audio was fine.
Firefox was the same.
On a stock G4 iBook w/10.3.9 it would not install because it needs 10.4.8 or higher.
I do not have a G5 in the shop now, but i'm sure the chop will be gone with a better video card and faster processor.

This is the same video file just different name than the one used on that page, http://www.nepadigital.com/temp/silverlight/test.wmv

Could you try loading it and see if its still choppy?

Not sure how the Mac players work but can you open as stream? As in can you open it directly from player? If you do that in Windows media player it will buffer for a few seconds and start playing (assuming you have fast enough connection).

If you can do that and report the results it would be great, I'll know if its the embedded player causing the problem.

Didn't work on my mozilla installation (2.0.0.12). The silverlight web site worked fine though. Your link worked fine on my machine in IE.

Richard,

Flip4Mac http://www.flip4mac.com/flip4mac_home.htm seems to resolve most issues, but it is still not a "stream" as in Windows. It was downloaded and once it had a decent buffer, was able to play with no chop while it finished downloading. It looks like you should be able to stream. http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_tech.htm

I will try a stock G5 Tuesday.

Richard S. wrote:
This is the same video file just different name than the one used on that page, http://www.nepadigital.com/temp/silverlight/test.wmv

Could you try loading it and see if its still choppy?

Not sure how the Mac players work but can you open as stream? As in can you open it directly from player? If you do that in Windows media player it will buffer for a few seconds and start playing (assuming you have fast enough connection).

If you can do that and report the results it would be great, I'll know if its the embedded player causing the problem.

Opened the above link in Safari, Nice Stream as mentioned earlier I use the Flip4Mac plugin and it streams in native Quicktime and also gives me the option to save it as a Quicktime movie

coalstoves wrote:Opened the above link in Safari, Nice Stream as mentioned earlier I use the Flip4Mac plugin and it streams in native Quicktime and also gives me the option to save it as a Quicktime movie

I'll be providing direct link to the files no matter what I do. The embedded video is just a bonus for those with the plug-in.

Silverlight is the new name of something that came up a few months ago (in beta as well) under the name WPF/e.

The installer for Silverlight doesn't look for a previous install under the old WPFe name, and installs itself in addition to the old plug-in. Bad.

For people who have installed the old beta, it is suggested to delete /Library » Internet Plug-Ins » WPFe.plugin. if they want to install Silverlight. There should be a WPFe receipt as well

coalstoves wrote:Silverlight is the new name of something that came up a few months ago

Well that "new something" is quite amazing if you check it out from developers point of view. It's combined with AJAX which allows for semless delivery of lot of media rich content like for example if you wanted to create a photo gallery with it. You can literally have millions of photos at your finger tips. One really cool feture is you can draw with it. Typically an image is a file but this allows you to draw with code, drastically reducing the file sizes.