Alpha Video with Silverlight 3 Pixel Shaders

One of the requests that I hear quite often for Silverlight is support for Alpha Video where video has transparent regions to ease compositing.  By adding GPU-Accelerated Pixel Shaders to Silverlight 3, that capability will now be possible.

One of the foundational new features in Silverlight 3 (to be released later this year) is the software-based GPU-based Pixel Shader support like WPF already has.  You can use any pixel shaders created for WPF for Silverlight applications.  The WPF Pixel Shader Library on CodePlex now has a Silverlight 3 library as part of the source code.  One of the shaders in that library is a simple color key pixel shader.  I started with that shader and adapted it by adding color and tolerance properties as well as design-time support for Expression Blend 3 and an installer that adds the shader to Expression Blend Asset panel).

You can download the shader installer and source code here.

5/15/2009 – Correction: pixel shaders in WPF are GPU accelerated, in Silverlight 3, they will be software-based.

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2009
  PingBack from http://www.anith.com/?p=37738

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2009
  Over at the Synergist blog, the author has a nice article on custom controls for Silverlight 3 that allow

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2009
  Silverlight har hitills inte haft stöd för Alfa-kanaler i video för att skapa effekter med genomskinlighet

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2009
    sempre me perguntavam se Silverlight tinha suporte pra video com canal alfa, e eu sempre respondia:

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2009
  Thank you for submitting this cool story - Trackback from DotNetShoutout

• Anonymous
  May 18, 2009
  Na początku traktowałem wsparcie dla pixel shaderów w Silverlight 3 jako miłą ciekawostkę. Dobrze, że

• Anonymous
  May 18, 2009
  De mogelijkheid van het gebruiken van Alpha Video (of Chroma Key) is een veel gehoord verzoek voor Silverlight