1.1 Glossary

  • Article

This document uses the following terms:

.nsc file: A file that serves as an announcement for, and contains information about, a media stream broadcast. This file allows a client to tune in to a broadcast. The .nsc file was originally known as a NetShow Station Configuration file. Because the NetShow protocol suite is now obsolete, the original nomenclature is no longer applicable and is not used. Also known as a Windows Media Station file or an NSC file.

Advanced Systems Format (ASF): An extensible file format that is designed to facilitate streaming digital media data over a network. This file format is used by Windows Media.

ASCII: The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is an 8-bit character-encoding scheme based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. ASCII refers to a single 8-bit ASCII character or an array of 8-bit ASCII characters with the high bit of each character set to zero.

big-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the most significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

little-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the least significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

parity packet: An ASF data packet that contains parity data and is used for reconstructing other lost packets. Unlike other ASF data packets, parity packets always have the Opaque Data Present bit set to 1 in the ASF data packet header.

session: The state maintained by the server when it is streaming content to a client. If a server-side playlist is used, the same session is used for all content in the playlist.

stream: A sequence of bytes that typically encodes application data.

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.