Dreaming of Building Your Own YouTube Clone?

Are you dreaming about building your own YouTube clone and don't know where to start? Well, believe it or not, Microsoft has the answer, via the Vertigo Software development company. A new end-to-end solution from the Redmond company, but put together by Vertigo, gets user-generated video content sites up and running in no time at all. With Video.Show, Microsoft is delivering a reference-quality sample, leveraging technologies such as .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, LINQ, Silverlight, Expression Encoder and Silverlight Streaming, designed to enable users to put together personalized YouTube- or MSN Video-like websites. Essentially, Video.Show is a reference-quality sample focused on Silverlight, Microsoft's alternative to the ubiquitous Adobe Flash technology. The sole caveat of the tool, besides the fact that it is currently only in beta testing phase, is the fact that it is focused on small volumes of content.

"Video.Show provides support for uploading, encoding, tagging, viewing and commenting on videos. Since not many people are building video sites like YouTube that have millions of videos, we've optimized the experience for sites with tens to thousands of videos," informed Tim Sneath, Microsoft group manager for client platforms. "The version published today is a beta release; we've still got a few minor tweaks ahead of us before we're ready to call this final. Nevertheless, if you're interested in using Silverlight to build out a video site, it's a great starting point."

Video.Show comes equipped with a range of features and capabilities, offering functionality from browsing to batch processing. At the bottom of this article, you will be able to find a list of the features, courtesy of Microsoft. Tim Sneath revealed that the public beta of Video.Show is the first step in opening up the solution to developers. The tool will continue to grow, but for the time being, the download only offers the source code. Sneath promised that the next milestone will also involve a production website.

Video.Show can be downloaded from here and offers:

"- Video wall for browsing videos. Hover the mouse over any individual video to see an instant thumbnail preview.
- Time marker-based comment system. Pause the video at an interesting moment and add your comment, and it will appear as that frame is displayed on playback.
- Site membership using ASP.NET. Sign in and create a custom profile; favorite, tag and upload videos.
- First-time experience for a user without Silverlight installed demonstrates best practices for detection and installation.
- Web services for retrieving video catalogs, tagging and favorites.
- Background batch processing task that handles the encoding of videos using Expression Encoder and uploads to Silverlight Streaming."

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