Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Carl Franklin does Steely Dan's "Home At Last" via Silverlight HD 720p

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Carl Franklin does Steely Dan's "Home At Last" via Silverlight HD 720p

Posted 2007-10-23 05:40 PM in Silverlight.

Wow. If you get a chance, here's a good reason to install Silverlight. Click on the picture of Carl Franklin at the right to see something pretty amazing.

It's Carl as a one-man-band playing piano, drums, bass and guitar, mixed together seamlessly into one amazing Hi-Def 720p video. Remember to double-click for fullscreen once you're in the player.

He explains the technical details on his blog. How he recorded it, which cameras, what programs and the final squishing with Expression Media Encoder. Here's the link to his original test and to

You wanna talk multi-talented? I need to learn the piano. Great job, Carl, truly amazing.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 12:16:15 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Interesting; wonder if Silverlight's available for my PPC Mac (doubt it) ...

Home at Last is one of my favorite Steely Dan songs, maybe I can check out the video some time.

Gordon

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 12:38:21 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

You can always download the WMV directly, but I'm not sure HD content will decode smoothly on an older mac.

Scott Hanselman

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 3:17:40 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Interestingly, I tried 4 times to play it and every time, the video and the audio weren't in sync. Even stranger was that it was off by differing amounts each time. Even after the video was fully downloaded, it didn't go away. What's up?

Rob

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:01:15 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Rob - Slow machine? Bad NVidia video drivers? Slow video card? Did you try the WMV direct download?

Scott Hanselman

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:30:06 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Carl is an amazing musician. I hung out with him in New York last month (next to last paragraph) and really enjoyed chatting with him. I made a recording of him just messing around on an acoustic guitar. It's a lousy recording, but he's so good that I listened to it twice on the plane ride home.

I used to consider myself a musician. Two things kept money in my pocket through high school and college: Programming and jazz. Then one day I picked up my sax for the first time in several years and realized that my skills had atrophied badly, and I didn't have the time or the heart to hit the woodshed and practice like I used to. For that reason, I get a kick out of seeing a renaissance man like Carl who can play in both of those worlds so effectively.

Of course, sleeping only five hours a day on a triphasic schedule probably helps. :)

Cam Soper

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 2:19:14 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Am I doing something wrong? When I try to open up his page in Firefox w/ Silverlight installed, I keep getting prompted to install Silverlight. Making it an IE-tab works. I haven't kept up much on Silverlight... is it supported on non-IE browsers or does Carl just have a bad Silverlight detector?