I wouldn't count on that. Microsoft actually has a very good track record of absorbing the space of various utilities into the OS package. Remember when things like calculators, file managers, notepads, clocks, calendars, address books, email, browsers, media players, and the like were separate packages from 3rd parties? I remember buying these things from companies that no longer exist.

it has no chance against flash.

Microsoft tried similar flash competitors before, and failed.

The only way this could possibly work if is Microsoft sabotaged flash, but it's most likely too late for that too.

Actually, I was looking for any info on the format itself or how it looked.

If MS wants to, it can make Flash a non-entity, just as it did Word Perfect and Lotus 123. Remember, they even made IBM quit the desktop OS game (OS/2 was a much superior product to Windows, but MS won anyway).

So aside from the MS can't do squat line, has anyone actually seen anything done with it?

Well competition is good and while I don't hope that MS wins, I hope that the competition spurs Adobe on to do a bit more than it currently is.

Here's an article a buddy just sent me.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9549

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2114418,00.asp?kc=EWEWEMNL041607EP38A"

Quite frankly, this could blow FLASH out of the water from a video editor's vviewpoint. Since this is done on NET framework, perhaps it opens up some real possibilities for VEGAS. Let's hope.

it is impressive that is for sure.

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/default_01.aspx

>>>If MS wants to, it can make Flash a non-entity<<<

Not in this case. Flash is used by everybody, sabotaging it, wouldl mean sabotaging Internet Explorer itself. Besides, Microsoft has already had a couple of these announcements since 1997 and failed to do anything about Flash. Their announced technologies are dead and nowhere to be seen. Even Adobe tried and failed miserably , in the end the only way to compete with Flash, was to buy Flash.

Flash does much more than just video, and everybody has it already, so it's not going anywhere.

Another example, I tried going to that link, clicked on the button, just a blank screen, then tried to play the video, tells me I don't have the required codec installed.

You can already see this will fail miserably, because with Flash none of this would have happened. Flash would have just played as planned.

You could say that Flash is killing off windows media and quicktime, so :-) you can see where the real power is.

Hah!

I, too, went to the link and clicked on the video window. After 5 seconds, the play button arms, so I click on it. Three seconds go by, and then the play button arms again. So I click on it and 3 seconds go by, then it arms itself again.

Hey, MS, put a Flash video on that web page. I'll help you if you want--it's real easy, and that way EVERYONE can see that video of yours.

It worked fr me with no problem. Were you all using IE or Firefox?

IE here

Now tried wth Firefox, I get that windows media skin with controls, but video doesn't play ( because of no codec installed ).

Firefox.

Video player shows up, but no video.

I should mention that this MS video player works fine on other sites (CNN, for example). Again, a cynic could just chalk it up to another quirk of the MS video codec.

The battle is for the next step in content delivery. The NET framework basis for Silverlight could open the door for the production of interactive video in VEGAS. IMHO, producing FLASH video sucks compared to the workflow in VEGAS. It'll be interesting to see IF Vegas has designs on offering authoring tools for interactive video. If so, we'll all be using Silverlight.

This is quite impressive - Once I installed the package it loaded quickly and played flawlessly - I downloaded the SDK and will start to play with this.

I use FireFox (still on 1.0.2) and had absolutely no problems.

When I said that MS could make Flash a non-entity, I meant that in the same way they did for Lotus 123 and WordPerfect. They didn't do so in an offensive onslaught, they just kept on pushing their products to be better and cheaper and eventually they won out. I was a WordPerfect user for years and still hate MS Word, but guess what I have on my machines at home an at work? WP had 85% market share and nw it's all but gone. Same for Lotus vs. Excel - I credit Lotus 123 for the success of the desktop PC but there is no one still running it now - Just about all spreadheet work happens in Excel. Again, my point was that if MS wants to, by sheer pricing, features and general attrition over however long it takes, it can make any product irrellevant.

Just MHO.

Birdcat:

Add to that the huge developer community that M$ft can tap into and you have a juggernaut. From the looks of it, Silverlight is intended from the ground up to interface with that community. This could, and I emphasize "could" be a huge plus for the Vegas user community.

From the get-go, Vegas has tied itself to the windows platform. Like M$ft or not, that's what contributes to the performance and stability of Vegas.

It'll be interesting to see where the Vegas people go with this.

Before anyone rushes into buying into Silverlight please remember this is not MS's first kick at killing Flash. They tried before a number of years ago and even released a full GUI based dev. tool but then abandoned it all some months later.

Flash has one huge advantage that will be insurmountable - millions of Flash developers already in the field.

Not to mention more then a few people are royally pissed at MS for just dumping their previous tool Frontpage and the Frontpage extensions forcing people to change a completely new one, a very poor business tactic. Why anyone thinks this will do something for the Vegas community is beyond me, like all web languages it's a programming skill not an video editing skill, and it's a duplicate platform, nothing new here, just an attempt to compete against Flash with an incompatiable platform that we need like a hole in the head.

The chances of any of us ever making anything with Silverlight are pretty much nil. The chances of a Sony company providing support for an MS (one of Sony's biggest competitor's) charge against a neutral technology like Flash are even less than zero.

Heh, if this wasn't true I'm sure the forum would have failed to accept the post.

BigRockies.com Your Home in the Rockies!

bigrock:

You must have stock in Adobe ;-)

From the standpoint of a Vegas user, Flash will probably never be integratable with Vegas. It could, and I emphasize COULD be that Silverlight can be integrated into Vegas since they are both built on the same development platform. If so, the possibility exists that we may all be able to easily adapt to interactive video and lot's of other technologies. I would personally be thrilled with this possibility.

Time will tell.

You can already do interactive video with flash, you just have to know flash well enough.

I doubt Sony will do all the work for you and make it easy to just click on a few things in Vegas and you end up with some kind of interactive video deliverable through silverlight. Even if that were to happen, it will never match what somebody with flash programming knowledge could do. So, either way you have to learn some programming.

Have you seen this

http://www.mgmgrand.com/

click on enter maximum vegas. It's pretty basic as far as interactivity ( but you could do just about anything, including stopping at any location and load a game to play, or interact with people, make the video itself into a game, all with just flash for interaction and game logic).

The whole thing is pretty cool, good camera work compositing and 3D sets. Even if Sony tried, you need a lot more than just Vegas and Silveright for something like this. ( And no, FCP+ all its addons, or that whole adobe suite won't be enough for this either )

For anyone interested:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/15/introducing-microsoft-silverlight.aspx

Watch the video on this page:

http://on10.net/Blogs/tina/out-with-wpfe-in-with-microsoft-silverlight-this-has-just-been-announced/