Programming with .NET - General

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

Derick_Clack — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:31:48 GMT

Our company builds communications software and we recently re-developed our Desktop Client software using WPF. Our next product is a light weight browser based client and our obvious choice is Silver Light due to its similarity to WPF / XAML. Not having microphone support is a roadblock for this project and we would hate to resort to the Flash microphone work-around or to develop the entire client using Flash as this would mean having to learn an entirely new technology. I think that not having microphone support in a brand new product such as Silver Light in this day where VOIP and instant communication is the norm is a HUGE blunder. Please fix it as we do not want to have to learn yet another technology.

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

jgauffin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:26:26 GMT

Yeah, I noticed that. I can't understand why it's so hard to implement? Just take a few classes from the standard framework and add them to silverlight =P

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

TimWard — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Gutted! Silverlight 3 Beta new feature list still has no microphone or webcam support

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx#whatsnew

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

jgauffin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:07:22 GMT

Any news on this? My next project is to create a sip stack in c# and a soft phone in silverligt. No microphone support is a show stopper for me.

Re: Re: Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

rakesh.nitw — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:30:32 GMT

Any samples on how we could use SAPI to implement voice recording using Javascript. I have been breaking my head over SAPI for 2 days now but nothing seems to work.

Re: Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

raulgspan — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:50:55 GMT

Just blogged about the Silverlight/Flash hybrid microphone solution we're considering for the Tutor.com Classroom, if you're inclined to go that way. You'll need to use Flash Media Server if you want the conferencing aspect, but at least the bulk of your application can be in Silverlight with just the voice piece in Flash.

Thanks,
Russell Greenspan

http://www.russellgreenspan.com
http://russellgreenspan.blogspot.com/

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

pdjplano — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:06:21 GMT

I'm building a few prototypes that are in a stop pattern now with Silverlight anyway because of the lack of microphone support, has there been any update on this in a future release?

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

TimWard — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:39:34 GMT

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.

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

fschwiet — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:26:16 GMT

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?

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

MichaelGG — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:39:51 GMT

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?

Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

TimWard — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:16:26 GMT

Just wondering if anyone has heard any more on mic/webcam support in Silverlight future versions?

With Flash still bound into Nellymoser*, and no sign that will change this in Flash10, the market is still ripe for MS to open up web based comms for a huge number of people that at the moment are tied into Flash-to-Flash products. If people could use Silverlight (or Flash) to take audio (webcam) from a browser and break this out from a backend server there are a huge number of applications (basically linking to any other communication system: linking to traditional phone systems, mobiles, 3G mobiles, SIP clients, Asterisk servers, IM clients etc....)

I did here an unconfirmed rumour that this was on some future roadmap but it would be nice to have some official confirmation and/or details as we have had similar with Flash for ages and continually disappointed.

Regards
Tim

*Nellymoser is the Flash audio codec and they continue to not make it available (apart from to a few for apparently huge licence fees)

Re: Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

DARK-BG — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:30:44 GMT

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.

Re: Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

TimWard — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:53:07 GMT

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.

Re: Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

nerddawg — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:26:05 GMT

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,

Re: Re: Microphone support in silverlight application?

Cass — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:36:21 GMT

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.