Today the Expression Encoder Team has announced Expression Encoder 3. Expression Encoder 3 is part of the upcoming Expression Studio 3 suite and comes packed with new features such as support for H.264 and the new Smooth Streaming technology.

And it also brings another super cool feature: Screen Capture.

Today, screen-casting has become quite popular with bloggers. Screen-casting allows bloggers to share what they are looking at on their PC screen with readers of their blog. It’s a great way to show off really neat software experiences that people should see for themselves.

With Expression Encoder 3, they are introducing the Expression Encoder Screen Capture feature. This feature can be launched right from the Start Menu (I’ve pinned it to my Taskbar in Windows 7). People can choose a specific region of their screen they want to record (or the whole screen) and choose to record audio from their microphone and video from their webcam too. It records in a special light weight codec developed by Microsoft Research that when recording video, it doesn’t use up so much system resources during the capture process. That means the actual recording process doesn’t steal so much system resources on your PC that what you’re recording doesn’t look so hot. After recording, you can import the capture into Expression Encoder for final encoding and publishing (including some awesome new Silverlight templates).

I’ve been trying this feature out for the last couple days and it is fantastic. I am definitely planning to do a lot more screen-capture videos with Windows 7 features.

Speaking of Windows 7 features, Expression Encoder utilizes the new Windows Taskbar in Windows 7 with encoding progress being displayed. The first encoding pass appears in yellow, and the second pass appears as green. Pretty slick!

Encoding First Pass:

Encoding Second Pass:
 

(Screenshots from Expression Encoder Team Blog)

For availability of Expression Encoder 3, keep your eyes on the Silverlight Team Blog for the official Expression Studio 3 announcement. Oh, and you should also check out…

For more information on Expression Encoder 3 and the Expression Encoder Screen Capture feature, click here to read the Expression Encoder Team’s blog post.

MIX09 kicks off today in Las Vegas and brings together web developers and designers to discuss how they can deliver a better experience through software and the Web. And we are making several announcements this week at MIX09 that will help web developers and designers easily create the best experiences with their websites and applications.

Today at MIX09 we introduced the next version of Silverlight – Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 offers web developers more than 60 controls to take advantage of – making it easy for them to create cutting-edge Web applications. Silverlight 3 expands on high-quality and high-definition video experiences with true high-definition video in full-screen mode including stutter-free live and on-demand video. Silverlight 3 supports more video formats, including H.264, and hardware-based media acceleration. And Silverlight 3 also adds support for Windows Touch on Windows 7 (click here to view my blog post on enabling Windows Touch on supported PCs with the Windows 7 Beta)!

Download: Silverlight 3 Beta for Developers

The final release of Silverlight 3 is expected to ship later this year. For more information on Silverlight 3, check out the Silverlight Team’s brand new blog: The Silverlight Blog.

NBC Universal has announced that they have chosen Silverlight to deliver the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games on its official Web site NBCOlympics.com. They used Silverlight for the Beijing Games with great success.

For a perfect example of the power of Silverlight web applications – check out the brand new web client for the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. You can browse the galaxy directly within your web browser! A comparison of features between the web client and desktop PC client of the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope software is available here.

Here on The Windows Blog, we utilize Silverlight for delivering video content to our readers. Our video content is hosted on Microsoft Videos and with their Silverlight Video Player we embed the video into our blog posts. We’re working with the folks at Microsoft Videos in doing something real neat with our video content (and it’s all in Silverlight) so stay tuned!

For the full press release of today’s announcements from Day 1 at MIX09 – click here. On top of the Silverlight 3 announcement, we also announced several new components of the Microsoft Web Platform which includes the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta. And we also announced new capabilities for Windows Azure as well.

Tim Sneath is “live blogging” MIX09 so if you’re wanting to stay on top of all the latest MIX09 happenings, read his posts.

Also announced today is the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. Web developers can use the toolkit to make it possible for people who use Windows Live Messenger to communicate and express themselves directly within their website. Essentially, a web developer can give you a pretty slick web IM experience using Windows Live Messenger on a website you are visiting.

Why would a web developer want to embed Windows Live Messenger IM functionality within their website? Visitors of a website with Windows Live Messenger functionality built in can IM with their contacts or even other visitors on the website. This creates a new level of engagement for visitors on that website.

For more information on the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, click here. UPDATE: Angus Logan blogs about the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit here and worth checking out.

We are looking at deploying the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit here on The Windows Blog for our readers.

MIX09 is coming up fast – kicking off in Las Vegas at the Venetian March 18th – 20th. If you register between now and Feb. 13th for MIX09 you can save up to $400 off the conference price – that means you get a full conference pass for $995! To take advantage of this offer, go to the MIX09 Registration page and choose "Register for the event using an RSVP Code" option and use the RSVP code MIX09offer to receive your discount.

Not only will folks at MIX09 get the low-down on the next major release of Silverlight – Silverlight 3 – there will be sessions on IE8 as well as Windows 7 and Multi-Touch. The current list of sessions is available here with more to be added soon.

Mike Swanson highlights the return on your investment in attending conferences like MIX09 in person in a really neat video. Mike talks about quite a bit in 4 minutes but is worth watching if you are asking yourself “why should I go to MIX09?”

If you are going to MIX09 you can MIXtify things by adding “Blog Bling” to your website. You can also download awesome MIX09 desktop backgrounds for your PC. The wallpapers look quite nice in the Windows 7 Beta!

For direct updates on MIX09 - follow MIX09 on Twitter.