Ok, I’m being melodramatic.  But if you do any kind of rich media publishing on the web and you thought the Flash FLV format was your only option – think again.  Microsoft has upped the ante quite a bit with their new free Silverlight Streaming service which is now part of Windows Live. 

Did I mention it was free?  This is a big deal.  Until now, you had to use a paid service such as Techsmith’s screencast.com to host your streaming media files, or you had to setup a streaming media server yourself.  Since I just did a complete overhaul of both my blog and our non-profit web site (www.worksofwonder.org) , I had to decide what to do with my Camtasia videos and other rich media.  Silverlight Streaming seemed like a good choice and I was amazed at how simple it was – especially now that Techsmith has upgraded Camtasia 5.1 so that the default settings produce Silverlight compatible videos.  

After creating a Silverlight Streaming account, I basically just opened the Camtasia project, selected WMV as the target format and then uploaded the resulting .WMV file to the Silverlight Streaming site.  No muss, no fuss.  All that was left was placing a simple URL reference on my blog, and voila!  Instant streaming video.

Notice the space allocation.  You get 10 GB of storage, and up to 10 minutes per video of free bandwidth.  When you think about it, that’s quite a bit of space for what you get: efficient, nearly instantaneous video playback.  To see what I mean, check out the video my wife and I produced for our Works of Wonder site. 

Works of Wonder - South Africa - The Eastern Cape

I had been thinking for a long time about how I was going to get that video online, but the complexities of producing the FLV and all the supporting files and other streaming goodness proved to be just a bit too much for my myopic little developer attention span.  I was always worried I was missing something important, not to mention the prohibitive cost of hosting it on a paid streaming service.  Now it’s very easy and simple.

I must admit, I’ve been on the fence with Silverlight and I’m just now starting to look closely at the tools and other resources Microsoft is making available.  One thing is clear – Microsoft is serious about the rich media market.  They’ve already announced plans for turnkey advertising as part of the Silverlight Streaming service.  I’ve already signed up and can’t wait to give it a try.

Who would have thought?  No more Flash!  Just kidding.

Did I mention it was free?

Stay tuned.

JFH