What is WMV?

WMV (acronym of Windows Media Video) is a compressed video file format created by Microsoft. The most usual container for a WMV file is an ASF (Advanced Systems Format) format ending with *.wmv or *.asf. In this case WMV supports managing digital rights for protecting intellectual property rights. Sometimes it is stored in an AVI or Matroska container format. When a WMV file is encapsulated in an ASF container format, it becomes capable of protecting intellectual property due to digital rights management facilities.

What is WMV designed for?

The standard was officially approved in 2006 as VC-1. The original WMV video format was designed by Microsoft for Internet streaming applications as a RealVideo competitor. Formats like WMV Screen and WMV Image are designed for specialized content.

What are WMV special features?

  • combination of elliptic curve cryptography key exchange, DES block cipher, a custom block cipher, RC4 stream cipher and the SHA-1 hashing function allowing digital rights management
  • supports interlaced video, non-square pixels, and frame interpolation
  • support variable bit rate, average bit rate, and constant bit rate

What are WMV advantages?

  • allows compression of large files without quality losses
  • offers digital rights management facilities
  • WMV 9 codec an open but proprietary standard
  • supported on many modern portable video devices and streaming media clients
  • can be played with numerous third-party players that use FFmpeg

Where it can be applied?

Wide range of programs based on different OS platforms allow to play WMV files (Windows Media Player, ALLPlayer, The KMPlayer, PowerDVD, RealPlayer, MPlayer, VLC Media Player, Zoom Player and Media Player Classic). WMV is an obligatory codec for PlaysForSure-certified online stores and devices as Portable Media Center devices. Devices with Windows Media Player such as Microsoft Zune, Xbox 360, mobile phones with Windows Mobile support this codec. WMV 9 is adopted for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

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