Advanced Systems Format

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Advanced Systems Format

.asf .wma .wmv

Filename extension

Internet media type

video/x-ms-asf, application/vnd.ms-asf[1]

Type code

'ASF_'

Uniform Type Identifier

com.microsoft.advanced-systems-format

Magic number

30 26 B2 75 8E 66 CF 11 A6 D9 00 AA 00 62 CE 6C[2]

Developed by Type of format Container for

Microsoft Container format WMA, WMV, MPEG4 etc.

Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Windows Mediaframework.
Contents
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1 Overview and features 2 License 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Overview and features[edit source | editbeta]

ASF is based on serialized objects which are essentially byte sequences identified by a GUID marker. The format does not specify how (i.e. with which codec) the video or audio should be encoded; it just specifies the structure of the video/audio stream. This is similar to the function performed by the QuickTime, AVI, or stream prioritization; as such, it is a format optimized for streaming. The ASF container provides the framework for digital rights management in Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Video. An analysis of an older scheme used in WMA reveals that it is using a combination of elliptic curve cryptography key exchange, DES block cipher, a custom block cipher, RC4 stream cipher and the SHA-1 hashing function. ASF container-based media are sometimes still streamed on the internet either through the MMS protocol or the RTSPprotocol. Mostly, however, they contain material encoded for 'progressive download', which can be distributed by any webserver and then offers the same advantages as streaming: the file starts playing as soon as a minimum number of bytes is received and the rest of the download continues in the background while one is watching or listening.

License[edit source | editbeta]

The specification is downloadable from the Microsoft website,[3] and the format can be implemented under a license from Microsoft that however does not allow distribution of sources and is not compatible with open source licenses. The author of the free software project VirtualDub reported that a Microsoft employee informed him that his software violated a Microsoft patent regarding ASF playback.[4] Certain error-correcting techniques related to ASF are patented in the United States (United States Patent 6,041,345 Levi, et al. March 21, 2000) by Microsoft.

See also[edit source | editbeta]

Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) Comparison of container formats

References[edit source | editbeta]

1. 2. 3. 4. ^ http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/vnd.ms-asf ^ "ASF (Advanced Systems Format)". ^ ASF Specification Download ^ Advogato: Microsoft patents ASF media file format, stops reverse engineering

External links[edit source | editbeta]

An Overview of Advanced Systems Format Overview of the ASF Format Library of Congress analysis of ASF format sustainability ASF Container Format - v2.0 (free available but unused) and v1.0 (reconstructed)

MSDN How To Embed Windows Media Player in a HTML Web Page (For Webmasters)

Creating A Windows Media Custom Experience (For Webmasters)

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Multimedia compression and container formats

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Internet Explorer

Categories:

Internet Explorer Container formats Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Digital rights management systems

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This page was last modified on 23 August 2013 at 04:49.

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