Support - Windows Media

To stream Windows Media, you will need to have Adhost set you up with the publishing point. Let us know the name you wish to use for the publishing point and the path to where your media content resides. Your hosting package may or may not allow Windows Media streaming. Please contact your sales representative for more info.

Once we have setup a publishing point you will need to setup your media files and, if needed, media pointer files. The file types that are allowed to stream are: .asf, .wma, .wmv, .mp3. The media pointer files are: .asx, .wax, .wvx. Mp3's *must* be called through a pointer file to stream correctly, and they do not do it very well anyway. It is recommended that you use Microsoft's codecs and formats.. Also, pointer files do not need to exist on the Windows Media server, they can exist elsewhere, they just need to call to the media files properly. Our servers only allow the mms (also mmst and mmsu) and rtsp protocols. We do not allow http streaming. Here is the correct format for a pointer file:

‹asx version = "3.0"›
‹entry›
‹ref href = "mms://servername/publishingpoint/file.asf"/›
‹/entry›
‹/asx›

"servername" will be the Adhost server name, server IP address or, if pointed to the servers IP address, your domain name. "publishingpoint" will be the name of the publishing point that Adhost sets up.

You save this as an .asx, .wax or .wvx file, the pointer file. Then you can link to this pointer file. You can, if you wish, link directly to the file (without pointer file) in your web pages. You would just use:

‹ a href = "mms://servername/publishingpoint/file.asf/" › Link to file ‹/a ›

Note: There are basically 2 ways to get a video file. One is to stream it, the other is to have it download.

Streaming will send just enough data at a time for the player to play the file. It will also not allow the viewer to save the media. If they close the stream in mid-stream, then no other bandwidth is used. If they wish to access it again, they will have to stream it again. Therefore streaming may or may not be more cost and bandwidth effective.

Option two is to just have it available for download. This, historically, requires the user to download the whole file to start playing, though now many servers and clients use progressive downloads: the server plays starts downloading the file, starts playing that part and continues downloading the rest of the file as the file plays. This option also allows the client to save a copy of the file being downloaded. This might save bandwith as they wouldn't have to download it again, but depending on the content, you may not wish to have the file saveable.