General Info

[Telerik Admin]

I'm very excited to bring you this news. After much hard work and planning, we have finally launched the brand new Telerik video portal, dubbed Telerik TV. The new Telerik TV portal has been designed to bring you the best video experience possible on the web, and it's been built from the ground-up using the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and Telerik OpenAccess ORM. Among the most important features of the new video portal:

• Big, easy-to-view videos
• Ajax-enabled video commenting
• Super flexible RSS support (make any search an RSS feed)
• Easy video browsing by product type
• Descriptive video URLs that are easy to bookmark and share
• Video "channels" for shows like Telerik Watch Minute and RadTips

We think you're really going to enjoy this new system for viewing videos at Telerik. Our goal is to make this your "one stop shop" for all video from Telerik so that it is very easy to discover video support resources. The site also stands to demonstrate the power and productivity of the RadControls and OpenAccess products- I coded the entire site from scratch in less than 3 weeks (that's part-time development, it probably could be done in a week with full-time development). This is another prime "real world example" of how the tools from Telerik help you achieve outstanding results in very little time.

We're far from done, too. Many of our older videos need to be updated to look "great" at the native "big video" size for the site (and we're actively working on that). We have plans to further improve the UX of the site. And, of course, we have tons of new video content in the pipes that will be regularly added to the site. We want your feedback, too! Let us know how we can improve the site and we'll work hard to make this the best video portal around. For now, though, enjoy the new site and have fun exploring the video content at Telerik!

Visit the new Telerik TV now

Yours,
Todd Anglin
Telerik Chief Technical Evangelist

[Jared]

Notice a lot of the videos use supporting files (such as xml data source and images on treeview video). It would be nice to have a link to supporting files, or a "quick" tutorial on how to just create them yourself. It would make it easier to follow along. Good idea though on these videos though, thanks.

[Todd Anglin]

Hello Jared-

I'm glad you like the videos. You are right that many of the videos use resource files for the demos. We are workinig as I speak to add download links to the videos that we can to the original Telerik Trainer source files. In the mean time, check out the original Telerik Trainer files (which contain the demo projects with code) here:

www.telerik.com/trainer

Hope that helps!

-Todd

[gdzierzon]

I like Telerik TV as well as the Telerik Trainer - the only problem is that I can't find a way to watch the videos on my blackberry while I'm on a plane. That is some of the best time for me to watch training videos like this, but I can't always pull out my laptop to watch either the flash movies or the downloaded tts files for which I need the telerik viewer.

Would it be possible to get these videos downloaded as wmv or avi files?

Thanks,

Gregor Dzierzon

[Todd Anglin]

We'd definitely love to offer more formats- especially WMV and MP3- for every video. Doing that, of course, requires an improved production workflow that can automate the batch production of videos in many formats, and I'm hopeful that we can eventually move in that directlon. I carry an iPhone, and I'd love to be able to watch more videos online there, too!

Stay tuned for updates and we'll try to make access to mobile devices easier in the future. In the mean time, give RIM a call for me and ask them to hurry-up their Flash support! :)

-Todd

[Aaron Lewis]

I'd give you my second born for iPhone-compatible videos, since we'll likely never see Flash or Silverlight working with the device.  Seriously, take my second born.  Videos or no!

[Michael Kovac]

Love the idea of instructional videos.

Would like to see code samples standardized on white background. Can't read colored font (i.e. dark blue) on black background (even on 24" screen). Lynda.com has done a superb job with their implementation, organization and presentation (somewhat similar to yours) - there are lots of samples to look at.
 
Also would like to see 3 to 4 videos of each control, from beginning (i.e. basic use) to more advanced (i.e. different types of databinding where appropriate) and maybe some "neat tricks" that can be done with them.

How about organizing the videos by control type within product type? (radtreeview could work?)
 
Thanks,
MK

[Todd Anglin]

@Michael-

Thanks for the feedback! I think you'll find that most of the videos on TTV do use the "standard" Visual Studio colors. We also try to use a larger than normal font size to make it as easy as possible to read the code in the videos. There are a few videos that used a more "advanced" developer color profile, but we've definitely heard the feedback that this is not good for videos and we will be avoiding the use of such colors in all future videos.

We are also actively working on providing more videos for all Telerik products, and we'd love to get to the point you've described. Stay tuned for more info on this front. For finding current content, we also agree there are ways we can improve our current video organization, and we will actively work on your suggestions for providing better ways to browse. In the mean time, try using the Telerik TV search to find videos. You can quickly search for a term, such as "radtreeview," and then "filter" your results to only return videos from the ASP.NET video library (or any other Telerik product). Hopefully that will help span the gap 'til we provide some new browsing options...

@Aaron-

Do you think the videos would be useful on the small screen of the iPhone? We tend to find it hard to produce videos that are clear enough at their present (roughly) 900x500 resolution, so I would imagine it would be very difficult to get much value out of these videos on the iPhone's 3" screen. What do you think?

-Todd

[Todd Rothman]

Todd,

Great videos.  My compliments on your effort.  1 big issue.  Your videos have lots of pre written files why cant we download them to follow along.  It is really frustratingh when I follow along in the beginning but then have to stop because the code gets large and there is no way to view it all.  Please, please upload a link for the files so I can get the full experience.  I am sure you want to maximize the results of your hard labor for your audience and having no files to follow along with you is like having a high end computer in your house but you dont have a keyboard to type into it :)


Best Wishes,

Todd (we share the same name :) 

[Todd Anglin]

Hello Todd-

(Good name, by the way!) We definitely agree that we need to do a better job of including code with videos and we'll renew our commitment to including sample code with all new videos. For now, make sure you check our Telerik Trainer and the content for that. The Trainer is a unique training environment that merges code and video in a desktop experience that is unlike anything you've probably seen before. It is by far the best way to get started with comprehensive code support.

http://www.telerik.com/trainer

Watch for more Trainer episodes and videos with supporting code soon! As always, thanks for the great feedback.

-Todd

[Asit Aithal]

I have developed a Google Gadget in Silverlight that uses RadControls for Silverlight. I think it could be showcased in Telerik Real World.

[zozzancs]

Hello!

I really like the videos,

But: audio quality is very poor, and the video quality could be better too :(
I work for a broadcast company, have lot of experience with video files, and if I can say something, it could be much better, not to use VP6 codec for video encoding. H264 does much better.
Or, for screen captured videos like this, MS windows media encoder's screen capture codec does it really nice too.

[Todd Anglin]

Zoltán-

Actually, most videos on Telerik TV are H.264 encoded in a FLV container. There are a few older videos that came from sources like GoToWebinar that are encoded with different codecs and uploaded in different containers, and we recognize that those videos don't match the quality of videos we have total control over.

Going forward, we continue to strive for the maximum possible video quality in the smallest possible file size. H.264 MP4s/FLVs will likely remain our format of choice. Hope that helps.

-Todd

[zozzancs]

Hello Todd,

Yes, I realized that the video I was watching is an older webinar, just as you said.

Thank you for your fast answer