Expression Encoder 5?

Question

I have been scouring the internet searching for any leads to Microsoft's plans for Expression Encoder.  Will there be an Expression Encoder 5, or will this product be phased out with Silverlight? Can anyone offer any insights into this?

Assuming Encoder will live on, a few other thoughts I had were:

1. I think the free version of encoder should support the import/export of MPEG-2, H.264/MPEG-4. The formats are so common and Apple's SDK's provide them built-in. 

2. There should be the ability to add multiple overlays, such as adding various images at different frames within the video.  Right now it only supports 1 overlay.  This seems quite limiting and I am surprised it is not in the feature request list.

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/* joshua m */

Answer 1

Hi twisterjosh:

I believe Microsoft has abandoned Expression Encoder. AFAIK the development team has been disbanded. Yes, the decision to walk away from providing a desktop webcasting tool was a major strategic error on their part. I did hear that they may be doing something with Azure but I for one am not interested in streaming via the MS Cloud. At my univerisity were pulling the windows servers and going with Wowza, Flash Media Encoder and Kaltura. Kaltura and Wowza are Linux based so that pretty much put Microsoft out of the picture. See,  I said it was a strategic mistake on their part! 

Jeremy

Answer 2

No new versions will be developed.

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/index.html

"Expression Encoder 4 Pro will continue to be available for sale through the calendar year 2013. It will be supported for the remainder of its support lifecycle and no new versions will be developed."

I also work at a university, cloud is not an option. Another lost customer...

Answer 3

Hi nmv7: 

I'm quite stunned by their decision to cancel Expression Encoder. The product was really starting to become useful and offering Azure as the alternative is not the same thing at all. Not even close. Really, how hard would it have been to put Expression into a periodic upgrade mode. Basically continuing to add improved device support and maintaining support for Smooth Streaming on IIS would have been all that is required. A small programming team could have handled that easily and MS would have benefited from the server sales this product spawned. 

So does this mean that:

1) Smooth Streaming on a local IIS Server is now no longer supported?

2) I'm expected to switch over to the Azure cloud.

3) Developers are out of luck if they want to integrate streaming in Visual Studio. Please don't say Azure is a viable option as it is not. I can't continue with EE if the writing is on the wall. 

This is without a doubt the worse decision MS has made with respect to streaming. They  basically rolled over and handed their market share to the competition. Way to go MS! 

Jeremy