What's new

Article
10/10/2017

Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Service Pack 2 (SP2) adds many new features to help you define your workflow and improve encoding quality and flexibility. Listed below are the new features added for SP2, as well as the features added in previous service packs and in Expression Encoder 4.

Manage publishing points from within Expression Encoder (SP2 and Expression Encoder Pro only)

In a Live Broadcasting Project, you can now create, restart or update publishing points on an IIS Smooth Streaming server. You can also choose to automatically update a broadcast’s EventID.

For more information, see Set Publishing Point options.

Support for more AAC audio options (SP2 and Expression Encoder Pro only)

You can now choose multiple-channel audio along with more bitrate and sample rate options when you use the AAC codec.

For more information, see Set Audio options.

Crop your sources in a Live Broadcasting Project (SP2)

You can now crop your live or file sources in a Live Broadcasting project.

For more information, see Crop video in a Live Broadcasting project.

Support for SRS audio (SP2)

You can now choose to enable SRS to convert an audio stream from multiple audio channels to two SRS 5.1 surround sound channels. SRS is a high-quality audio encoding solution for encoding multi-channel audio files.

For more information, see Set Pre-Processing options.

Support for multiple video bitrates in a live broadcast (SP2)

You can now add multiple bitrate streams to your broadcast in a Live Broadcasting Project.

For more information, see Set Video options.

Support for Sandy Bridge graphics processors (SP2 and Expression Encoder Pro only)

GPU-accelerated encoding has added support for the high-performing Sandy Bridge graphics processors, in addition to existing support for CUDA devices. You can use both of these devices when encoding for increased speed and performance.

For more information, see Crop video in a Live Broadcasting project.

Utilize your GPU when encoding (SP1 and Expression Encoder Pro only)

If you encode your video using the H.264 codec and if you have an NVidia CUDA version 1.1 or higher card, you can now take advantage of GPU-based encoding. Enabling GPU-based encoding can significantly improve your encoding performance.

For more information, see Enable GPU-based encoding.

Use Silverlight templates in a Live Broadcasting project (SP1 and Pro only)

Expression Encoder includes several Microsoft Silverlight templates optimized for viewer interaction with live streams. You can choose to generate your templates locally or on a server and you can even preview your broadcast in a Silverlight template.

For more information, see Use Templates in a Live Broadcasting Project.

Import captions into Live Broadcasting projects (SP1 and Pro only)

You can now import SAMI, SMI, DXFP, and TXT caption files into your Live Broadcasting projects.

For more information, see Captioning in a Live Broadcasting Project.

Use Screen Capture as a live source (SP1 only; unlimited capture length in the Pro version and limited to 10 minutes in other versions)

Expression Encoder adds the ability to select Screen Capture as a live device source, meaning that now you can now stream live broadcasts of your on-screen actions.

For more information, see Use Screen Capture as a Live Broadcasting device.

Set new MP4 audio options (SP1 and Pro only)

For more options when encoding MP4 audio, Expression Encoder adds support for the HE-ACC (High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) codec.

For more information, see Set Output formats.

Specify key type in DRM encryption (SP1 and Pro only)

You can now specify whether you are providing a key seed or a content key when setting your DRM encryption options.

For more information, see About encoding and playing back DRM content.

Stream using push and pull broadcasting simultaneously (SP1 only)

You can now employ both live streaming modes, broadcast and publishing point, at once, giving you more flexibility in presenting your live broadcasts.

For more information, see Set the Broadcast stream options.

Refine your workflow by using projects

Expression Encoder presents three clearly-defined workspaces to match the output that you want to create. Depending on the output that you want, you can work in the Transcoding Project, the Silverlight Project, or the Live Broadcasting Project. Each project includes all the tools that you need to create high-quality content ready for publishing and distributing.

For more information, see Working with projects.

Protect your content with DRM (Pro only)

With Expression Encoder, you can use Microsoft PlayReady technology to encrypt your files using Digital Rights Management (DRM). With DRM, you can be confident that Expression Encoder is helping to protect your content so that it will be used only as you specify.

For more information, see Working with Digital Rights Management.

Work with DXFP caption files

Expression Encoder includes the ability to import multi-language DFXP, SAMI, SRT, SUB, and LRC caption files, and to export DXFP caption files. You can import these caption file types, combine them all in a job, edit the footage in your job, and then export the captions as DXFP files combined by language and caption type, and with all the edits that you made in Expression Encoder reflected in the DXFP files.

For more information, see About captioning.

Create Live Smooth Streaming broadcasts (Pro only)

In the Live Broadcasting Project, you can set your live production to broadcast using Live Smooth Streaming technology. Now, your users can receive your real-time broadcasts, and those broadcasts maintain their playback quality even when network bandwidths fluctuate.

For more information, see Setting up a Live Smooth Streaming broadcast.

Work with Expression Encoder Screen Capture enhancements

Expression Encoder Screen Capture adds a Capture Manager feature to help you keep up with your captured files, and also other tools to help refine your screen capture.

For more information, see About Screen Capture.

Choose from more H.264 (Pro only) and VC-1 options

Expression Encoder includes more options to further refine the encoding of your H.264 and VC-1 output.

For more information, see Set H.264 options and Set VC-1 options.