My Expression Encoder Training

Posted By: Ben Waggoner | Sep 8th, 2007 @ 8:56 PM

A couple of months ago the Expression Encoder team invited me to record their official training videos, produced by Total Training. They're now online for free.

It was an interesting production process. I've done a number of training titles over the years, including for Class On Demand, and this is the first time I've been able to do it in HD with digital capture. The workflow was simple - HDMI out of my Toshiba G35 laptop into a Blackmagic Design Intensity HDMI capture card. Full 1280x720 60 fps capture, straight into a NLE.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to encode it myself - the cobbler's children don't have shoes and all that. It was encoded with an older version of our codec without all the usual tweaks. But you can certainly get a feel of this very exciting product. I'll try to get the source and redo it with our new VC-1 Encoder SDK - it'd look a lot better.

Here's the individual files (linked to from the Expression training videos page):

Introduction to Expression Encoder
Enhancing Media
Metadata, Markers, & Silverlight
Live Production
Advanced Expression Encoder

I haven't been on camera enough to get used to watching and in particular hearing myself - to my ear I sound like an overcaffinated Jim Henson.

UPDATE: I reencoded the clips myself, details here.