Getting to Know Microsoft Expression Media 2

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Video Transcript

So here we are inside of Microsoft Expression Media 2. Now before we actually get started using this tool, let's go ahead and take a look at exactly what it is and how it can help you in your workflow. Microsoft Expression Media is a database that's based on a cataloging system, so what it means is you can take all of your file types which, by the way, supports over a 100 file types in the Media browser alone and you can catalog them into different sections so that you are more organized and you can access any file at any time simply by doing a search or by clicking on the file inside of the catalog.

Now each time you create a new catalog, you are going to create a Thumbnail based on your media asset. So if you had a QuickTime movie in here or a Microsoft Windows Media File, for instance, it would show you a thumbnail preview of that movie or if you had pictures from a camera, it would load all those in this thumbnails and you can simply click on those and view all the thumbnails as well.

The great thing about Expression Media is the fact that you can view your assets even when you are offline. Now that means that even when you have photos that are stored either on a network or an external hard drive or something like that even if you are not around that particular device or system, you still have that thumbnail preview and the media preview right here inside of Expression Media to look at and you can also export those catalogs out to clients or anyone else without actually having to have the assets attach to them. So this creates a wonderful amount of flexibility and also cuts down on file size, significantly, when you are transferring files to clients or business partners or anyone else that you might be sending files to. So they are really going to appreciate that as well.

Now I have been talking about Catalog, so exactly what are Catalogs? Well, Catalogs are datasets that contains specific information about your media. For instance, Catalogs consist of a Thumbnail, obviously, you want to be able to see the media that you are using here inside of the Expression Media 2 and they also contain the relative path information where the file is stored on your system or external hard drives etcetera. They also contain Meta and EXIF data and this is just information about the file or image that you are looking at.

So for instance, it would have an ICC profile or it might have the raw image data, it might have the location, the time, the date stamp that kind of thing, all that information that comes with the file that's imported from a camera or a media device, all that is stored in the Metadata and the EXIFdata that goes along with every single, one of these files.

So when you are working inside of Expression Media, you are going to have all of these different tools at your disposal. For instance, you have the ability to Label images with colors like you see there red, blue, green, brown, magenta, all these different types of colors, you can add to those. You can Rate your images 1 through 5 stars, you have Catalog Sets, which are different areas that you can separate your catalogs into which just helps with the organizational process and things like that. You will also have the Date Finder, you can go ahead and search by date and search by File Type. All these different things that are going to help you here inside of Expression Media to access and organize your data in so many different ways.

You have pretty different views to view your media, List view, Thumbnail and Media view. We will talk about exactly what those are and how those can help you a little but later on. We have also got the Information panel which is going to contain all of the different metadata that we talked about earlier; it's going to list that for you. You are going to be able to access all of that, right from within this panel right here. And then you also have all of these options up here such as Image Editor, Slide Show options, going into the Light Table view, all of these different things are just some of the tools that are really going to help you get going.