Just another part of the web

Streaming video is really easy - in concept. All you have to do is create an asf file, link to it, and, in theory, it'll all just work. Until, that is you try to figure out how to convert anything into an asf file...

I searched the web for something that would convert my AVI files that were recorded in my camera into an asf file - the only things I found were very expensive tools, and ones that I was not willing to pay for. And then, I finally found out the secret - an asf file is a wmv file, with the extension renamed. Microsoft explains it here. It took me almost 3 months to find this article, and the purpose of this is to prevent you from wasting that time too.

I choose to try (and then buy) a simple and inexpensive program from BoilSoft; I bought their ASFConverter. This converts my AVI files to wmv; after that, I just renamed the extension to asf, and created a play list (an asx file), and link to it. This works like a charm.

Here's a sample of an asx file that I used:

<asx version="3">
  <entry>
    <ref href="http://www.somelink.com/movie.asf" />
  </entry>
</asx>