Is it possible to receive microphone input in silverlight application now or in near future?

This isn't currently supported in Silverlight 1.0 or 1.1 Alpha. Can you elaborate on your app or business scenarios that are affected by this? Is this a critical feature for you (i.e. adoption blocker) or a use case blocker or nice-to-have? This information will help us plan and prioritize it appropriately.

Ashish Shetty | Program Manager | Microsoft
Blog: http://nerddawg.blogspot.com

I second webcam / microphone support streaming.

This is one big feature for Flash & Flash Communication Server. It allows developing video/audio applications without having to install applications and allows for very simple hook up with very high user success rate. Also once the plugin is deployed on virtually every machine you don't have any deployment of application issues.

We chose FlashCom for this mostly because of the deployment issue and not having to describe to the user how to stream etc. Just connect to the website and all the Action Script sets the proper bitrates etc.

However if this increases Silverlight's foot print significantly if it could be a deployed library of some sort that would be better since I understand you don't want the plugin to get too large and most Silverlight sites will not require it.

It's just not very user friendly to require a download of Windows Media Encoder, describe to the user how to connect, etc.

I don't think another server software is required. Windows Media Server is probably fine although I've never written WMS server-side business logic so I am not sure how that works.

FlashCom Server is pretty simple in Action Script to manage streams and rooms etc.

I think with this kind of capability and the MediaElement already being able to stream from these servers one could do some very interesting live streaming sites and video/audio conferencing etc.

Thanks and take care.

I have an application that I'm dying to develop it in SL 1.1 using WebCam. The program needs to use WebCam to take individual pictures every 10 seconds and send it to the server to be viewed by other users (hopefully using SL to view the images). But since SL is pushing the MultiMedia's envelope to the Max, I'd love to see support for WebCam Video streaming and Image grabbing!

For Microphone and Audio, I can use that feature to develop a central "Transcribing" system, where the speaker can speak and all the audios are stored in central server where Transcribers can transcribe the audio and post them back as text material.

But don't be surprise to see more and more people begin to use SL for developing multimedia interactive systems that the data is severe-based!

Hope this helps!
 

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..Ben

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Microphone/Web Cam support would be a great addition to the SL runtime. The ability to record/upload/stream images or voice recordings directly from a silverlight app would be much interactive then requiring the user to launch another app, perform capture, and then import to Silverlight.

Jack Bond

Khet - The first Silverlight multiplayer game

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

I have voice enabled web application. Currently I am using SAPI for it but it requires to first setup SAPI on client machine so it ends up for demo only and not much commercial use.

Second application I am working on is a Music project. I want online users to just play their instruments and my silverlight application will capture it and transform it in readable tablature. Now this tablature is sharable with all online users and they can play/learn as needed.

I believe Audio/Video support in SL application will be killer!!!

I need client side audio and video support and as SL doesn't seem to provide it, I am trying to mix SL and Flash together. This is a pain in the ...

You might be able to mash up a Java applet with Silverlight using Javascript to accomplish what you're trying to do with the microphone. That might work as a stop-gap measure until (hopefully) something happens here.

One of our products has an ActiveX control to record audio and upload it to a web server. We're looking to implement something that will work cross-browser/cross-platform, so we want to ditch the ActiveX for something else. I was hoping to use Silverlight to interact with the microphone, but we'll have to use something else. It hinders our ability to adopt simply because it adds complexity to our product -- now users would have to have Java AND Silverlight in order for it to work.

Voice-interactive, rich-media, web applications could have a large impact. Examples of usage include VOIP web applications, chat rooms, singing lessons, and the examples mentioned by other posters. These aren't all particularly new or innovative, but they do require the use of other technologies.

My only concerns are security related. I wouldn't want a malicious website turning my microphone on or watching me through my webcam (which is part of why I don't own a webcam).

Regarding VOIP and audio capture on Silverlight:
We need something in Silverlight like the "Pacifica" VOIP infrastructure that Adobe has just announced is coming to Flash.

From Ryan Stewart’s blog 2007-10-02: http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=1066
Partial quote:
“They just made a phone call from the [Flash] player to a cell phone in the audience.”

From the Pacifica blog 2007-09-20: http://pac.ifica.net/  “Pacifica is High-Quality VoIP for Flash”.

Partial quote:
“- Right now, Pacifica enables point-to-point (P2P) transmission of the media channel once the connection is established via our servers.
- We are dedicated to a complete P2P solution going forward, to eliminate the complex server back end and configuration needed with most VoIP technologies.”

Alan Cobb
www.alancobb.com

We also need microphone (and possibly webcam) support for most the project we would adopt for. Being a primalily a MS based company it would fit much better into our other developments but we are currently having to look to use Flash (which is driving me nuts)

We have a telphony system that handles calls on the PSTN (normal phones/mobiles etc), VOIP (SIP /RTP) and Video (3G and SIP based)  and have several clients that want to enable web access: such as click-to-call functions, or manage (inc recording) audio for the platform via web based tools.

So hoping MS add some support in a later Alpha.   

Tim Ward, Senior Developer, C3 Ltd 

For us, having silverlight support at least microphones is a big plus.  We are undergoing a million dollar software development project and the only piece that is flash is the microphone support. 

I excuse in advance , but dudes are you joking with us!? Everyone here is hoping that Silverlight will close the WEB app to the maximum to the ordinary desktop app-s and to the oop.Simple support of MIC and WebCam (and sockets) will made silverlight perfect choise for creating web based chat clients and clients that can connect for example to the existing Instant Messengers networks like Skype,Q,Ms Messenger , and so on and use all of their capability without need to install any one of them.For the moment the primary things that silverligh can do is to render and that is all of you is commercing this capability.Creating animations , cool looking buttons ,and o yeah i`ve nearly forgot but it can play mp3 wma and wmv.Adobe is moving toward without a brake informing users what will come you are doing something but you don`t want to inform the community what even you are working on!

My suggestion is to release one list of the things that you are about to include , release one list with the things that you have just started working on or you are thinking in the near future to start working on and finaly the most important thing create one list with the things that the community is asking about and let them vote which is most important to be as soon as posible included.

Dark-BG is right, I have most of my projects on hold just because I want to use Silverlight in them when I dont even know if I can, just providing a list of what we can expect (if not when) would help us a lot and we will be able to asses if we should go ahead with Silverlight now or wait longer or just use other solutions. I dont know if I can offord to wait any longer.

Regarding the community to vote what is important, I think most of us agree that are desparate for Data Binding and Contorls which they are already promised in SL 1.1B.

I really wish they would atleast give us a timeframe to when we can expect Beta just an approximate, I am tired of checking my feeds everyday for any news of SL 1.1B just to end up depressed that I have to wait atleast one more day. Come on guys you announced SL 1.1 back in MIX'07 dont make us wait till MIX'08 which is right at the corner. Atleast SL 1.1 Beta 1 would do for now or just a list of what we can expect and when.

--
Imran Shaik
If this answers your question please select "Mark as Answered"
Old Blog | Silverlight 2.0 Quintessential Rambling |My Feed

This sort of candid feedback is appreciated. I apologize the messaging and roadmap was so late coming. This morning Scott announced some more details on his blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/29/net-web-product-roadmap-asp-net-silverlight-iis7.aspx. Hopefully this gives you a better picture of what's cooking in Silverlight. I should also add, like good food, good software takes time to prepare :) But I promise you'll be very pleased with the results. Please do stay on.

Cheers,

Ashish Shetty | Program Manager | Microsoft
Blog: http://nerddawg.blogspot.com

Got all excited by your post Ashish..... but your wrong with your promise because all the good features are still worthless to us without mic/webcam support.

Also since weve since found the fact that Flash audio uses a Nellymoser codec that isnt easy to legally breakout from.... if MS had not only added mic support but a way to breakout from a backend server to other formats you would have got a huge jump on Adobe.

This news has killed the hope we had for so many projects and our last hope is now on Adobes future plans.

Nice to hear that there will be extension of the UI Framework and the so needed controls that will make our life less complicated :P Another good news is finaly to hear that the sockets are on the roadmap with shure!But still there is no sign of future support of mic and web cam which in combination with the sockets will be very nice for browser based IM apps.

I`ve got and one final question!Why MS dropped the 3D support!? Because SL is multiplatform and there is no DX on other platforms?!Why don`t put Open GL support?!Every machine on the planet support OpenGL no matter what OS is instaled!

Good Work after all i`m happy microsoft is finaly releasing something powerfull against Flash.And it is trying to bring real oop to the web world.

I hate to me too this, but this feature definately got my vote. .NET programming model with access to audio/video == some pretty awesome possibilities. Then again, Silverlight is so full of win that they can afford to miss entire areas and still kick the crap out of Flash.

I suppose the good thing is that MS is being pretty active in developing SL, so if things aren't in 2.0, a new version should be around the corner. I'd rather have a _solid_ 2.0 release with a smaller set of features, but all of them well done (SOAP faults, Context Menus, dropdownlists, treeviews and some kind of windowing/navigation/tabthing come to mind).

I wonder, since SL can access the browser and expose objects and so on, is there any way to grab audio or video from an ActiveX control hosted on the same page? Nevermind that it'd be ugly and so on... just, would it be possible?

-Michael

*According to Wikipedia, Nellymoser codecs were also licensed by Microsoft for Xbox. Guess they got something going for them?

  +1

  For an application I am porting, audio recording and playback is required.

   The scenario might be different than those mentioned above because the data stays on the client.  The application reads the data into memory, does some processing and then plays it back, all on the client machine.  With this scenario, the application needs access to the raw amplitude vs time data of the sound recording.  It also needs to modify some of that data before playback.

  There is audio playback of audio which the client reads from the server.  This audio is not analyzed/modified.

DejaVudew:

You might be able to mash up a Java applet with Silverlight using Javascript to accomplish what you're trying to do with the microphone. That might work as a stop-gap measure until (hopefully) something happens here.

  I agree this is technically possible, but its been a real slowdown for me.  I've spent two days trying to hook up existing java applets (which lack documentation) and building a custom ActiveX control.  I'm mainly having trouble getting the javascript to recognize the interfaces, moreso than implementing the audio functionality itself.  Do you have examples for this?

Now that Flash 10 has Speex support people are unchained from Nellymoser issue, so its even more important to have mic support in Silverlight.

MS have missed an opertunity to be the 'first to market' lets hope they finally listen and at least come in a close second.

As a company currently only using MS for our software we wanted to use SilverLight as it would fit in best with everything else, but if we dont hear soon that SilverLight will at least have mic support (and probably web cam) then we will have to comite to the dark side (Flash) once Flash 10 is being pushed out.