| Windows Media Video |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT WINDOWS MEDIA VIDEO | |
| computer file formats | |
| video codecs | |
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WMV is not built solely on Microsoft in-house technology. It is believed that WMV version 7 (WMV1) was built upon Microsoft's own non-standard version of MPEG-4 Part 2 . However, as WMV version 9 has been standardized as an independent SMPTE standard (421M, also known as VC-1 ), it's reasonable to believe that WMV has sufficiently evolved in a different direction than MPEG-4 to be considered a unique codec in its own right. There are currently (April 2006) 16 companies in the VC-1 patent pool. Microsoft is also one of the members of the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 patent pool. The video stream is often combined with an audio stream of Windows Media Audio and encapsulated in Advanced Systems Format files, carrying the .wmv or .asf file extensions. WMV files are played by players such as MPlayer or Windows Media Player , the latter being only available for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh systems. Many third-party players exist for various platforms such as Linux that use the FFmpeg implementation of the WMV Codec s. WMV is generally packed into an Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container. It can also be put into AVI or Matroska container formats. The resulting files may be named .avi if it is an AVI-contained file, or .wmv or .asf if it is an ASF file, or .mkv if it is an MKV file. WMV can be stored in an AVI file when encoding with the VirtualDub encoder and using the WMV9 VCM codec implementation. Microsoft's Windows Media Player for the Mac does not support all WMV encoded files since it supports only the ASF file container. More files can be played with Flip4Mac and Quicktime or MPlayer for MacOSX. When encapsulated in ASF file format, WMV can support Digital Rights Management facilities intended to protect Intellectual Property rights. Besides being one of the most popular codecs for distributing video on the Internet, the codec is also used to distribute high definition video on standard DVD s in a format Microsoft has branded as WMV HD . This WMV HD content can be played back on computers or compatible DVD players. CODECS
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