This question has actually become an FAQ, so I thought it would be worth blogging it once and for all.

It is quite frequent that when you encode a video using Expression Encoder, and publish it on Silverlight Streaming, that you do NOT want it to start immediately upon loading the web page where the video player is hosted. Preventing auto-play was already possible in Expression Encoder 1, even though you had to tweak to setting directly in the skin, once the video was encoded, or change the template and then all the subsequent video encoding would be done using auto-play = false.

Quick reminder of how to do that in Expression Encoder 1: You can edit startplayer.js manually after encoding, but before publishing, and set autoplay to false:

StartPlayer_0.prototype= {
                _handleLoad: function() {
                    this._player = $create(   ExtendedPlayer.Player,
                                              { // properties
                                                rootElement : $xamlGet("Main", $get(this._hostname)),
                                                autoPlay    : false,
                                                volume      : 1.0,
                                                muted       : false,
                                                startTime   : 0.0,                                                                         
                                                loopCount   : 1,
                                                autoScale   : true                                                                                     
                                              },
                                              { // event handlers
                                                stateChanged: Function.createDelegate(this, this._onStateChanged)
                                              },
                                              null, $get(this._hostname)  );
                    this._playNextVideo();             
                },

Now in Expression Encoder 2, you can do it directly from the user interface. It is not trivial to find as you have to make sure that a video is actually imported in Expression Encoder, and that you have selected a skin template, then click on the expanded view of the control bar. See step-by-step below.

1. Open Expression Encoder 2 and Import a video

2. Go to the Output tab on the right hand side, and select a Template

3. Click on the Show Advanced Properties arrow symbol to expand the options available

4. Select or unselect the various check boxes that are now available for you to pick from:

• Cue Video on page load = download the video when loading the web page, deselect if you don't want to load the video when your page loads
• Automatically start video when cued = autoplay, so deselect if you don't want the video to start playing when loaded. This is particularly recommended if you have multiple videos on the same web page. It can create quite an annoying cacophony when they all playback together.

See screen shot below with the click spots to get there.