Very Computer

Is it possible to vie .ASF (windows media) in linux... Please respoond
asap

NO. ASF is a proprietary sound file format which Microsoft has designed
purely as competition to a reasonably open standard (MPEG 3 Layer 1).

In the two independant tests I have seen it is not noticable better
than MP3 at similar bit rates. See :

        http://david.weekly.org/audio/
        http://www.billabong-media.com/compression/

This is yet another case on Microsoft trying to force one of their
proprietarty "standards" down the throats of the computer using
public.

Erik
--
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"Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer."
-- anonymous

It's not only a sound file format. Say, a 650 MB mpeg would fit in
~150 MBs, with some side effects though.

Hmm.. if I remember right Microsoft ported a sound/movie player to Linux once,
I don't know if it's available anymore (last time I tried it, they
didn't distribute it again).

There's always hope left for WINE, which could possibly run Mediaplayer
in near future (if it doesn't do that right now).  

Quote:>This is yet another case on Microsoft trying to force one of their
>proprietarty "standards" down the throats of the computer using
>public.

But they do have the right to try. Nevertheless not all is bad.

--vh

Right.

But .ASF is more than a sound encoding format. It supports video as
well. With multiple types of codecs. And the M$ Encoder (4.0) supports mp3
audio as well as their own codec, and mpeg-4 video which is cool.
Interesting, when you select MPEG 2 Layer 3 audio, it still outputs an ASF
file, but the audio stream within the asf file is plain mp3.  How to get at
it, i don't know.

Last year in http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/dailynews/032098.htm
microsoft actually says that they are going to come out with a LINUX
version of Windows Media Player! Of course they don't mention it now, maybe
they decided not to? I won't believe it till I see it running on my laptop!

jeffk

--
Jeff Koftinoff
http://www.jdkoftinoff.com/

It probably just wraps a header around it. From looking at some
mp3s, my guess is that if you found the first occurence of 0xFF, 0xFB
in the file and deleted everything before that you'd have a normal
mp3 file. I'd be interested in hearing if thats the case.

Quote:> Last year in http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/dailynews/032098.htm
> microsoft actually says that they are going to come out with a LINUX
> version of Windows Media Player! Of course they don't mention it now, maybe
> they decided not to? I won't believe it till I see it running on my laptop!

I think I or someone else will reverse engineer it before MS releases it
for Linux.

Reverse Engineering (ie disassembling an executable to make a compatible
product) is LEGAL here in Australia. If I had some spare time I would
have a serious crack at doing this.

Erik
--
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"He's a born-again Christian. The trouble is, he suffered brain
damage during rebirth."

It probably wraps each 'packet' individually as ASF is set up to be streamed via
UDP and Multicast IP as well as plain tcp/ip sockets and HTTP.  So packets can
be re-requested if lost.

Quote:

> > Last year in http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/dailynews/032098.htm
> > microsoft actually says that they are going to come out with a LINUX
> > version of Windows Media Player! Of course they don't mention it now, maybe
> > they decided not to? I won't believe it till I see it running on my laptop!

> I think I or someone else will reverse engineer it before MS releases it
> for Linux.

> Reverse Engineering (ie disassembling an executable to make a compatible
> product) is LEGAL here in Australia. If I had some spare time I would
> have a serious crack at doing this.

Interesting, I did not know that.  The first step of course would be to get the
MS media-streaming SDK and see what they actually publish about it.

jeffk

--
Jeff Koftinoff
http://www.jdkoftinoff.com/