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Ken Daniels · Guest

We have ads in our asx files that need to be fetched by
Windows Media when it first loads. It appears that each
video is being retrieved seconds before they play.

Is it possible to code the asx so that it requests all
items in the play list when the asx first loads in the
player?

Ken

Neil Smith [MVP Digital M · Guest

Yes. You can add <PARAM NAME="prebuffer" VALUE="true" /> as a child
element of either the ASX or ENTRY element.

This will allow the next sequential playlist item to begin buffering
*if* the user has a connection enough to allow extra bandwidth at the
end of the current clip (over and above that required to stream the
clip to the end).

You can also preroll 5 seconds of the ad content to a memory buffer,
using script commands sent by the encoder (and stored within the media
file on the server) - have a look at this page for examples of using
the OPENEVENT and EVENT script commands :

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/adswm.aspx#implementing_event_switching__cbrq
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/adswm.aspx#inserting_event_script_commands_in_the_broadcast_stream__xdbw

HTH
Cheers - Neil

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:35:06 -0700, "Ken Daniels" <gt4161b@msn.com>
wrote:

Kenyatta Daniels · Guest

Thanks for the reply,
We gave the buffereing a shot, but it wasn't exactly what
we needed.

We were hoping to have Win Media retrieve all the urls
when it first read the asx, because our ads have a time
limit for synching up. (Unfortunately, sinc we rotate ads
every 30 sec, we need the beginning and tail ads to be
pulled within 30 secs of each other for them to match)

So if we have 2 min of content, but the trailing ad gets
called/buffered near the end of this content, the
beginning and trailing ads might not match up.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks Ken

Neil Smith [MVP Digital M · Guest

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 07:09:23 -0700, "Kenyatta Daniels"
<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

gt4161b · Guest

Sorry for the confusion.

We need all the ads within our asx's (see below) to be synchronized ...

<ASX version = "3.0">


<Entryref
href="http://adserverw2/html.ng/site=io&keyword=banner&tile=12345"/>

<EntryRef
Href="http://adserverw2/html.ng/site=io&keyword=prevideo&tile=12345"/>


<ENTRY ClientSkip="No">
<REF HREF
="mms://test.server/video/sports/2005/01/total.new.you.10.300k.wmv" />
</Entry>


<EntryRef
Href="http://adserverw2/html.ng/site=io&keyword=postvideo&tile=12345"/>
</ASX>

The problem is that our ad system has a 30 sec expiration rate that delivers
a different ad 30 secs after the 1st one is requested (the expiration is set
in a cookie on a per user basis).

Unfortunately, we are noticing that the Windows Media plugin is requesting
each stream (Ad 1,2,3 & content) just before the stream actually plays. So if
each ad is 10 sec and our content is 4 min long the last ad won't be
requested from the ad server until (00:00:10 + 00:00:10 + 00:04:00 =
00:04:20) 4:20-ish into play back.

We were wondering if there was a way to have the plugin request all the
video elements when it first loads the asx file.

(We accept that we might be SOL, on this one)
Thanks again for any assistance.
Ken

"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" wrote:

Neil Smith [MVP Digital M · Guest

So to confirm your requirement, you need to buffer the playlist items
*just* before they are due to play, but not to prebuffer until the
previous playlist entry is playing ... it's tricky.

OK well here's a long shot ... I'll describe what I'm thinking but
I've no idea if it will work.

How about you include each ad within a playlist of its own, so instead
of them being in the main file, you use the ENTRYREF and point it
at a playlist. Inside that (included) playlist, you have the reference
to your ad stream.

Now here's where I think there *could* be a trick :

At the top level of the the ASX file, set <PARAM NAME="prebuffer"
VALUE="false" /> (so you're setting it globally for the playlist)

If you then set within your external playlist <ENTRY /> tags, <PARAM
NAME="prebuffer" VALUE="true" /> I would expect that to take
precedence over the global buffering (because it's more specific)

So the way it could work is that the external (ENTRYREF) playlists and
their content are set to not buffer until the playlist is 'read' (that
is, until it's encountered by the parser).

And then the content *within* the external playlist is set to buffer.

Probably I'd set the generic content to also have a buffer=true
parameter to ensure the important content really does get buffered. If
there are conflicts in the duration and sequence of buffering, you
might want to also set <PARAM NAME="ShowWhileBuffering" VALUE="true"
/> for some elements of the playlists - just play it by ear <g>

It could be worth a shot just because it's 10 minutes work with a text
editor and logfile reader. But I've no idea if it'll actually work for
you ;-)

Cheers - Neil

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:37:12 -0700, "gt4161b"
<gt4161b@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

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