Set Silverlight template options

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To maximize the interactivity and flexibility of your media, encode using a Microsoft Silverlight template. Microsoft Expression Encoder includes templates that you can use for your video. Some templates are designed to take advantage of the marker thumbnail feature in Expression Encoder, which you can use to create chapter markers that your viewers can use to navigate to specific points in your video.

If you want to experiment with several templates in order to test their look or functionality, you can do so very quickly. Once you have encoded a video using a particular template, you can subsequently preview any of the other remaining templates. Just choose a new template in the Templates panel and encode again, and Expression Encoder will display your video in the new template. If you changed the template but did not change any encoding options, Expression Encoder does not have to re-encode the video, only the template, and so it displays an almost immediate preview.

To set template options

  1. If you can't see the Templates panel, on the Window menu, click Templates.

  2. Set the Silverlight template options according to the following guidelines:

    • Template menu   Choose a template from this menu. You can apply only one template per job.

    • Preview area   See a preview of your template in this area. You can quickly preview all the templates by pressing UP ARROW or DOWN ARROW. To see a full-sized preview, click the preview image.

    • Template options   Choose how you want your video to behave once the user has downloaded it. In the On Load menu, do one of the following:

      • Choose ShowPosterFrame to download the template, but not the video.

      • Choose ShowVideoPaused to display a Start button that the user must click to download and play the video.

      • Choose ShowVideoPlaying to play the video as soon as it is downloaded.

  3. Select Show captions during playback if you want the user to be able to view closed captions.

  4. The following options appear after you select a template and then click Show/Hide advanced propertiesEe341428.2f8a79a9-68d2-4878-8b75-c76ceb921b3b(en-us,Expression.40).png. Set these options according to the following descriptions:

    • Mute player on start   Select this option if you want the video to start with audio muted. The viewer can then choose to enable the audio.

    • Show playlist on player start   Select this option if you want to display a playlist that shows all the videos you have encoded to create this particular file.

    • Display Timecode   Select this option if you want your viewer to see the video timecode.

    • Enable Cached Composition   Select this option to take advantage of a Silverlight feature that enables the caching of visual elements and the subsequent displaying of the cached data instead of initiating another rendering of the element. Use of this feature can result in greatly improved performance.

      For more information about this feature, see About Silverlight templates.

    • Enable Player popout   Select this option to enable a viewer to play your video outside the browser.

    • Enable Player to be run offline   Select this option to enable a viewer to download your video and play it later from a hard disk drive.

    • Stretch Mode   Select this option to specify how the browser will stretch the dimensions of the encoded video. Set the options as follows:

      • Choose NoStretch if you don't want to apply stretching to your video.

      • Choose StretchDistorted to have your encoded video fill the destination dimensions for both height and width, and not to preserve the aspect ratio of the source.

      • Choose StretchToFill to resize the encoded video to fill the height dimension, and stretch the width to maintain the aspect ratio.

Note

Once you choose the parameters for the advanced properties, Expression Encoder writes them to the Default.html file for the template. You can also manually modify those parameters. To access the file from Expression Encoder, click the white box next to the Template menu and choose Open Template Location. Right-click the Default.html file, and choose the option that opens the file in Notepad.

See also

Concepts

Set Silverlight template options

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