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.

WMV Files

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

For more information on the WMV file format, refer to the Microsoft documentation on the WMV Format.

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 WMV, refer to the following objects:

WMProfileManager object

WMProfile object

Stream Configuration and Mutual Exclusion

The stream configuration object is used to specify the stream properties like the stream type, compression, 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 WMStreamConfig object.

For more information on Mutual Exclusion, refer to the WMMutualExclusion object.

Pushing data to a Windows Media Server

You can push data to a Windows Media Server while you are compressing for realtime streaming using LEAD MMS Sink without having to use the Windows Media Encoder utility. The video can be compressed with H264 or with Windows Media Video codec.

For more information on pushing data to a Windows Media Server, refer to Using LEAD MMS Sink.

Adding Script metadata

You can add script metadata at various points to a Windows Media file using the Leadtools.Multimedia.WMScript class.

Script metadata can be detected during playback and the playback applications can respond to it in various ways. For example,a Windows Media Player could automatically open a URL in a browser whenever an URL command is issued. See the Microsoft documentation, Using Script Commands Supported by Windows Media Player, for a complete list of script commands supported by the Windows Media Player.

Windows Media 9.5 Redistributable

It is best to 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, refer to the Microsoft documentation on Software Distribution.

There is also a LEAD Windows Media Reader filter which you should redistribute in order to be able to play Windows Media files from a URL under Vista.