Using Intelligent Encoding
In the course of choosing the look of your video, or when deciding where to place cut edits, captions, and markers, you may want to preview your ideas many times before deciding on the final result. You can use the Intelligent Encoding feature of Microsoft Expression Encoder to quickly experiment with many parameters as you build your job. Each time you trigger the encoding process, Expression Encoder automatically determines which properties of your job have changed from the previous encoding session. Expression Encoder will encode the sections and parameters of your job that have changed without re-encoding any other segment of the video unnecessarily.
For example, suppose that you encode your project using a particular profile. Once Expression Encoder finishes encoding that file, if you do not change any other video or audio parameter, Expression Encoder will not re-encode the entire session again in subsequent encoding sessions. That means that you can now experiment with adding any number of script commands, or preview the look of every Microsoft Silverlight template. With each encoding session, Expression Encoder will compress only the script command or template information. This can greatly reduce the time it takes to encode, which encourages experimentation and refinement.
Intelligent encoding works not only in a new work session, but also if you open saved job files and do not change the original profiles as you experiment. Intelligent encoding also works with adaptive streaming content and allows you to edit only one stream while leaving the others intact.