Windows Media

Windows Media is a multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit with several application programming interfaces and a number of prebuilt technologies.

Applications

*Windows Media Player - Media playback
*Windows Media Encoder - Media encoding tool
*Windows Media Services - streaming media server

Formats

*Advanced Systems Format (ASF)
*Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) and Windows Media Playlist (WPL)
*Windows Media Audio (WMA)
*Windows Media Video (WMV) and VC-1
*HD Photo (HDP) (formerly Windows Media Photo (WDP)
*DVR-MS, the recording format used by Windows Media Center
*SAMI, the closed caption format developed by Microsoft. It can be used to synchronize captions and audio descriptions with online video.

Other

*Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), for transferring and synchronizing media on portable devices
*Microsoft Media Services (MMS), the streaming transport protocol
*Windows Media DRM, an implementation of digital rights management
*WMV HD, (Windows Media Video High Definition), the branding name for high definition (HD) media content encoded using Windows Media codecs. WMV HD is not a separate codec.
*Windows XP Media Center Edition, versions of Windows XP or later with built-in Windows Media Center
*Windows Movie Maker, a Windows Media movie editing application

External links

* [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia Microsoft's official WM site]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/intstreaming.aspx Windows Media Intelligent Streaming] (or Intellistream)
* [http://finalbuilds.edskes.com/#wmlite Windows Media Lite]
* [http://www.spinnaker.com/crypt/drm/freeme/Technical Description of the algorithm used for WMA encryption]

See also

*QuickTime - Apple Computer's multimedia framework