Windows Media Support

The LEADTOOLS Multimedia toolkit wraps many of the Windows Media objects and interfaces to provide the maximum flexibility in digital media authoring process.

ASF Files

The Advanced Systems Format is the container for the Windows Media based digital contents. ASF is used for storage and playback of synchronized digital media streams or transmitting the streams over networks.

For more information on the ASF, refer to the Microsoft documentation on the ASF Format at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa390652.aspx .

Profiles

A profile is a collection of data that describes the configuration of an ASF file that contains at least one stream. A profile contains information about each stream, stream configuration, and the relations between the different streams like mutual exclusion.

The profile object and its subordinate objects provide the necessary functionality to configure various aspects of the profile. Profiles can be saved to disk for later use.

For more information on the ASF, refer to:

ltmmWMProfileManager object

ltmmWMProfile object

IltmmWMProfileManager interface

IltmmWMProfile interface

Stream Configuration and Mutual Exclusion

The stream configuration object is used to specify the stream properties like the stream type, number, name, bit-rate, quality, etc. The mutual exclusion object helps multiple streams co-exist and delivers streams one at a time.

For more information on Stream Configuration, refer to the ltmmWMStreamConfig object and the IltmmWMStreamConfig interface .

For more information on Mutual Exclusion, refer to the ltmmWMMutualExclusion object and the IltmmWMMutualExclusion interface .

Windows Media 9.5 Redistributable

It is recommended you redistribute the Windows Media Format components with your application. These components are included in an installation package named wmfdist95.exe, which can be found in your Redist\MM folder. These components are also included in Windows Media Player 9 and later versions. Therefore, you do not need to install these components on computers that have Windows Media 9 player installed. For more information on how to install this redistributable, you can see the Microsoft documentation at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa390922.aspx .

There is also a LEAD Windows Media Reader filter which you should redistribute to be able to play Windows Media files from a URL under Vista. This filter provides the ILMWMReader interface for controlling the filter's behaviour.