Get bytes? (stream)

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Ahmed Ilyas - 26 Jun 2006 00:06 GMT

I was unsure where to post this but though this would be the best place.

What I am trying to do is send via a stream, from PC > PPC a number of bytes
from a file (of media) - this maybe too techie for here.

The question is, is there a way for WMP to read these bytes and play the
data from the bytes given? (assuming the bytes are of a correct media
playable format)
I know you can open a file in WMP, obviously it opens the file, reads bytes
and "plays" but would it be possible, instead of opening a file, to give it
some bytes to play directly?

Where is the best place to post this Q if no one knows?

Thanks!

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Tony A. - 26 Jun 2006 03:23 GMT

> I was unsure where to post this but though this would be the best
> place.
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> bytes and "plays" but would it be possible, instead of opening a
> file, to give it some bytes to play directly?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your question, but what you seem to be
describing is bog standard media streaming. The answer would thus
appear to be yes, since Pocket WMP supports the MMS streaming protocol
(that's Microsoft Media Services, not Multimedia Messaging Service).
Of course you need to implement (or utilise a server that implements)
MMS in order to send the stream, using the correct container format
(ASF) and codec (WMA/WMV). Windows Media Encoder is free from
Microsoft, you can use that standalone or within your apps for the
purpose.

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Ahmed Ilyas - 26 Jun 2006 04:07 GMT

Many thanks Tony.
I should have mentioned that I already know about the SDK's and so on and
yes you are correct about what I am trying to achieve. :-)

But I would like to achieve this with almost any file format that is
possible to play in WMP (assuming we have the codecs installed)

how would I actually go ahead and implement this?
It's obviously not going to be like this:

Server open media file
Server read x bytes
Server send x bytes to client

Client recieves x bytes
Client (somehow????) P/Invokes WMP and gives it x bytes to play

surely that is not the way?

How would I go ahead and do this?

Once again any guidence is much appreciated

> > I was unsure where to post this but though this would be the best
> > place.
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> Microsoft, you can use that standalone or within your apps for the
> purpose.

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Brad Leyden - 26 Jun 2006 06:17 GMT

No codecs for the mobile version you are stuck with what you have unless you
install another player

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>
> Many thanks Tony.
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
>> Microsoft, you can use that standalone or within your apps for the
>> purpose.

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Tony A. - 26 Jun 2006 12:49 GMT

Well at this point you probably would be better off asking in one of
the developer groups ;). I'm a programmer, but not with Pocket PC or
multimedia.

However if I was trying to do this, bearing in mind that Pocket WMP
only supports WMV/WMA for streaming (even though it supports MP3 for
file playback, it doesn't support it for streaming), and additional
codecs can't be installed by the user, seems to me the only way that
makes sense is to transcode to WMV/WMA at the server.

Still not sure what you're trying to do at the other end, why do you
need a client other than WMP itself? Trying to do server-initiated
playback? I guess your client could effectively be a streaming proxy
server, serving a "silent" stream continuously until it receives some
actual data from the server to inject into the stream. Like I say,
this is beyond my areas of knowledge.

Pocket WMP supported formats
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311886

> Many thanks Tony.
> I should have mentioned that I already know about the SDK's and so on
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Once again any guidence is much appreciated

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Ahmed Ilyas - 26 Jun 2006 13:05 GMT

Thanks again for the great response!

Well yeh, I initially wanted the "users" to use the WME for streaming
content so the PPC can recieve those streams of media but sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesnt. Plus most users don't understand why they have to
install WME just to do this (don't get me started....lol)

thought I could make an app to pretty much send/recieve the bytes of media
data and give it to WMP on the PPC for it to playback those bytes, as if it
were streaming/playing a file.

> Well at this point you probably would be better off asking in one of
> the developer groups ;). I'm a programmer, but not with Pocket PC or
[quoted text clipped - 39 lines]
> >
> > Once again any guidence is much appreciated

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