Updated Microsoft Media Platform Player Framework for Windows 8 RP Released

Friday, June 01, 2012

Updated Microsoft Media Platform Player Framework for Windows 8 RP Released

Programmer Payback - Microsoft Media Platform Player Framework for Windows 8 Release Preview

In case you missed the news, Microsoft just hit a major milestone on its road to shipping Windows 8 with the public launch of the Release Preview version. With this new version comes new features and as expected: a number of trivial, yet importing changes that will affect app developers and their apps.

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One such effort that we were proud to release alongside the launch of Windows 8 Release Preview is the update to the Microsoft Media Platform Player Framework (an open source video player component for Windows 8 metro style apps).

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While Windows 8 includes some essential and great components to help building top notch media apps (namely the MediaElement for Xaml developers and the Video tag for JavaScript/HTML developers), the purpose of these components is primarily aimed at providing the fundamentals and low level support for playing audio and video. We here at Vertigo Software know video and we know that there is still a mountain to climb before you can ship a great media app. In a joint effort with Microsoft, we’ve worked hard to fill this gap by building a media player framework to make it simple and straightforward to accomplish the vast majority of your media app needs in Windows 8.

The Microsoft Media Platform Player Framework ships with a JavaScript and Xaml version of the framework that offers out of the box features to build great video apps without the fuss and months of development required to build your own media player. Besides support for the Windows 8 Release Preview, our latest update also includes support for major features such as player DVR controls (scrubbing, FF, RW, play/pause, …etc), player styling and branding, closed captioning, and just released today: video advertising!

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Player Framework: an open source component of the Microsoft Media Platform

An open source, robust video player framework for Windows 8, HTML5, Silverlight, Windows Phone and other application platforms.

Video players can be incredibly difficult to build. When developers require support for adaptive streaming, closed captioning, advertising standards integration, DVR-style playback control, and other advanced features, the complexity of their video player grows exponentially. Over the last few years at Microsoft we have helped build some of the most advanced video applications on the Web including the browser-based experience for the Beijing and Vancouver Olympics with NBC Sports, the last three seasons of NBC's Sunday Night Football (including the 2012 Super Bowl), the CBS March Madness college basketball tournament, Wimbledon, and a number of other major, live events with millions of simultaneous users. As a part of those projects we have developed one of the most powerful video players on the planet. And we've decided to share it with everyone, for free.

The Microsoft Media Platform's Player Framework is an open source video player that we continue to develop and evolve. It is available for Silverlight, HTML5, Windows Phone, Xbox, and now, in our latest release, Windows 8 Metro-style applications. And it's fully open source!

The Player Framework supports a long list of advanced features including:

Adaptive streaming and advanced playback heuristics via the IIS Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8

Closed captioning support via SMPTE-TT and TTML

Advertising standards support including VAST, MAST, and VPAID

Advanced DVR-style playback

Robust skinning and styling

A number of other powerful features

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