Develop Reference

ExpressionPlayer does not play Azure Smooth Streaming Source

I'm writing a VOD solution. For some time I have been working with the SSME:SmoothStreamingMediaElement successfully for testing and now I would like to utilise one of the Expression Players.
I'm using Azure Media Services, specifically Smooth Streaming. While these work fine in SSME I can't get them to work with an ExpressionPlayer. I don't know why.
I'm now at a point where I'm hard coding a Uri to try and get this to work as below:
void dataConectorPopulatePlaylistDownloadComplete(MemoryStream returnData, EventArgs e)
{
<snip>
var myPlaylist = new ExpressionMediaPlayer.Playlist();
var playlistItem = new PlaylistItem();
playlistItem.MediaSource = new Uri("http://xxxxxms1.origin.mediaservices.windows.net/b78750fc-9e2f-448c-86e3-d5de084791ea/GOPR0009.MP4-b2d2b578-3560-42c6-9927-2a791f395e19.ism/manifest",UriKind.Absolute);
playlistItem.IsAdaptiveStreaming = true;
myPlaylist.Items.Add(playlistItem);
SmoothPlayerStreaming.Playlist = myPlaylist;
<snip>
}
Using the above returns 404 not found in the player video playback window.
This is a valid URL and a valid Smooth Streaming Uri. Using this exact same Uri in a SSME control works fine.
What have I done wrong?

The ExpressionMediaPlayer class makes a hidden call to the ClientBin/SmoothStreaming.xap file. If you don't have it there - you should add it.
Here is the link to the blog post where you can download the xap file and source code of the expression player. Direct link
After you download the archive above, you can find this file at this path: EE4SP1SilverlightDefaultWithAudioVolume.zip\Templates\Silverlight Default -- with Audio Volume On Start\SmoothStreaming.xap
If it still doesn't work, you should replace the MediaPlayer.dll by projects from the archive. You need to add (Add -> Existing Project) 3 projects from the SharedV4SP1 folder: MediaPlayer, OfflineShared, PlugInMSSCtrl.
I've already tested your code in my application and it started to work after I have copied the xap file and replaced the dll-reference by existing projects.

Getting MP4 File Duration with DirectShow

I need to get the duration of an mp4 file, preferably as a double in seconds. I was using DirectShow (see code below), but it keeps throwing a particularly unhelpful error. I'm wondering if someone has an easy solution to this. (Seriously, who knew that getting that information would be so difficult)
public static void getDuration(string moviePath)
{
FilgraphManager m_objFilterGraph = null;
m_objFilterGraph = new FilgraphManager();
m_objFilterGraph.RenderFile(moviePath);
IMediaPosition m_objMediaPosition = null;
m_objMediaPosition = m_objFilterGraph as IMediaPosition;
Console.WriteLine(m_objMediaPosition.Duration);
}
Whenever I run this code, I get the error: "Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040265"
I also tried using this: Getting length of video
but it doesn't work either because I don't think that it works on MP4 files.
Seriously, I feel like there has to be a much easier way to do this.
Note: I would prefer to avoid using exe's like ffmpeg and then parsing the output to get the information.

You are approaching the problem correctly. You need to build a good pipeline starting from source .MP4 file and up to video and audio renderers. Then IMediaPosition.Duration will get you what you want. Currently you are getting VFW_E_UNSUPPORTED_STREAM because you cannot build the pipeline.
Note that there is no good support for MPEG-4 in DirectShow in clean Windows, you need a third party parser installed to add missing blocks. This is the likely cause of your problem. There are good Free DirectShow Mpeg-4 Filters available to fill this gap.
The code sample under the link Getting length of video is basically valid too, however it uses deprecated component which in additional make additional assumptions onto the media file in question. Provided that there is support for .MP4 in the system, IMediaPosition.Duration is to give you what you look for.

You can use get_Duration() from IMediaPosition interface.
This return a double value with the video duration in seconds.
Double Lenght;
m_FilterGraph = new FilterGraph()
//Configure the FilterGraph()
m_mediaPosition = m_FilterGraph as IMediaPosition;
m_mediaPosition.get_Duration(out Length);

Using Windows Media Player Component also, we can get the duration of the video.
I hope that following code snippet may help you guys :
using WMPLib;
// ...
var player = new WindowsMediaPlayer();
var clip = player.newMedia(filePath);
Console.WriteLine(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(clip.duration));
and don't forget to add the reference of wmp.dll which will be
present in System32 folder.

Make correct URI for WP Game Library

I am trying to create a library with sounds in it, but I cant get the URIs to work, if I use a online uri like
new Uri("http://www.archive.org/download/BrahmsViolinConcerto-Heifetz/03Iii.AllegroGiocosoMaNonTroppoVivace.mp3")
it works fine, so the issue is linking correctly to my folders in my project
My in my WP Game Librarys folder I have \Sounds\letters and in that folder is a sound named a.wma
My Method for loading this is
public void PlayLetter(string letter)
{
try
{
Initialize();
FrameworkDispatcher.Update();
var uri = new Uri(#"/Sounds/letters/" + letter + ".wma", UriKind.Relative);
var song = Song.FromUri("sound", uri);
MediaPlayer.Play(song);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());
}
}
And I of course give it string "a" as a parameter when it fails
I have also included the sound file in my project like
I just get a
A first chance exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll
But its an uri problem I am certain as I tried a online URI that worked just fine
Also I am in doubt of 2 things, is MediaPlayer the right thing to use in a game? And can a library play sounds (Or even contain them)

The typical thing in XNA would be to use a SoundEffectInstance:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.xna.framework.audio.soundeffectinstance.aspx
Unfortunately SoundEffectInstance only works with wav files. If you want to play back longer music files - you can use a MediaElement - but that allows for playback of a single compressed audio file at a time only. Another option might be to play compressed from the MediaLibrary using the MediaPlayer class. You could also save your own compressed audio file in the MediaLibrary to play it from there. See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.xna.framework.media.medialibrary.songs.aspx

How to capture screen to be video using C# .Net?

I know there are lots of question like this.
But I don't want to use the Windows media encoder 9 because it's a problem to get one, and then it is no longer supported.
I know that, one possibility is to capture lots of screenshots and create a video with ffmpeg but I don't want use third party executables.
Is there are a .net only solution?

the answer is the Microsoft Expression Encoder. It is according to my opinion the easiest way to record something on vista and windows 7
private void CaptureMoni()
{
try
{
Rectangle _screenRectangle = Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds;
_screenCaptureJob = new ScreenCaptureJob();
_screenCaptureJob.CaptureRectangle = _screenRectangle;
_screenCaptureJob.ShowFlashingBoundary = true;
_screenCaptureJob.ScreenCaptureVideoProfile.FrameRate = 20;
_screenCaptureJob.CaptureMouseCursor = true;
_screenCaptureJob.OutputScreenCaptureFileName = string.Format(#"C:\test.wmv");
if (File.Exists(_screenCaptureJob.OutputScreenCaptureFileName))
{
File.Delete(_screenCaptureJob.OutputScreenCaptureFileName);
}
_screenCaptureJob.Start();
}
catch(Exception e) { }
}

Edit Based on Comment Feedback:
A developer by the name baSSiLL has graciously shared a repository that has a screen recording c# library as well as a sample project in c# that shows how it can be used to capture the screen and mic.
Starting a screen capture using the sample code is as straight forward as:
recorder = new Recorder(_filePath,
KnownFourCCs.Codecs.X264, quality,
0, SupportedWaveFormat.WAVE_FORMAT_44S16, true, 160);
_filePath is the path of the file I'd like to save the video to.
You can pass in a variety of codecs including AVI, MotionJPEG, X264, etc. In the case of x264 I had to install the codec on my machine first but AVI works out of the box.
Quality only comes into play when using AVI or MotionJPEG. The x264 codec manages its own quality settings.
The 0 above is the audio device I'd like to use. The Default is zero.
It currently supports 2 wave formats. 44100 at 16bit either stereo or mono.
The true parameter indicates that I want the audio encoded into mp3 format. I believe this is required when choosing x264 as the uncompressed audio combined in a .mp4 file would not play back for me.
The 160 is the bitrate at which to encode the audio.
~~~~~
To stop the recording you just
recorder.Dispose();
recorder = null;
Everything is open source so you can edit the recorder class and change dimensions, frames per second, etc.
~~~~
To get up and running with this library you will need to either download or pull from the github / codeplex libraries below. You can also use NuGet:
Install-Package SharpAvi
Original Post:
Sharp AVI:
https://sharpavi.codeplex.com/
or
https://github.com/baSSiLL/SharpAvi
There is a sample project within that library that has a great screen recorder in it along with a menu for settings/etc.
I found Screna first from another answer on this StackoverFlow question but I ran into a couple issues involving getting Mp3 Lame encoder to work correctly. Screna is a wrapper for SharpAVI. I found by removing Screna and going off of SharpAvi's sample I had better luck.

Create Video out of image files?

I'm trying to make a video out of a folder full of jpeg files. I tried Google, and everybody is stuck with this. I have downloaded the WM SDK and the Encoder, but since the moment I don't know their object model I cant do much.
Does somebody here have some code WORKING about how to create a WMV or an AVI or a MPEG video file out of a folder full of jpegs? (In C#)
I can see on the answers that apparently there is no way to do it from C#, just using a third party. I will check your suggestions.

Take a look at Corinna John's AVIFile wrapper. I used it in the AVI output plugin for Cropper.

VirtualDub is capable of making a video out of several image files. Here's a quite overview of how to do it.
FFMPEG, as CptSkippy mentioned, also has this feature.

See the AVBlocks Slideshow sample. It creates a video (like MP4) from images. The input is a series of JPEG images. The output is configured with an AVBlocks preset.

Try via NuGet "accord.extensions.imaging.io", then I wrote the following little function:
private void makeAvi(string imageInputfolderName, string outVideoFileName, float fps = 12.0f, string imgSearchPattern = "*.png")
{ // reads all images in folder
VideoWriter w = new VideoWriter(outVideoFileName,
new Accord.Extensions.Size(480, 640), fps, true);
Accord.Extensions.Imaging.ImageDirectoryReader ir =
new ImageDirectoryReader(imageInputfolderName, imgSearchPattern);
while (ir.Position < ir.Length)
{
IImage i = ir.Read();
w.Write(i);
}
w.Close();
}
It reads all images from a folder and makes a video out of them.
If you want to make it nicer you could probably read the image dimensions instead of hard coding, but you got the point.

Have you considered using FFMPEG? I've used it to create thumbnails from video in several projects.

I finally settled on Splicer. Free, simple to use, and it works. More info at Working way to make video from images in C#