Edit

Share via

A Basic Playlist

  • Article

[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

The following playlist example shows a basic set of playlist elements. When writing your own code, you will need to change all URLs and file names to valid file names that are accessible to your Windows Media Player.

Code Example

<ASX version = "3.0">
<TITLE>Basic Playlist Demo</TITLE>
    <ENTRY>
        <TITLE>An Entry in a basic playlist</TITLE>
        <AUTHOR>Microsoft Corporation</AUTHOR>
        <COPYRIGHT>(c)2000 Microsoft Corporation</COPYRIGHT>
        <REF HREF = "mms://proseware.com/path/Yourfile.wma" />
    </ENTRY>
</ASX>

The following table provides details on the use of each element in the example code.

Line Description
<ASX version = "3.0"> The ASX element identifies for the client (Windows Media Player) that this is a Windows Media metafile playlist. The version attribute specifies the version number of the metafile elements.
<TITLE>Basic Playlist Demo</TITLE> The TITLE element identifies the title of the playlist as a whole. Windows Media Player displays this metadata as the show title.
<ENTRY> Begins the ENTRY element. An ENTRY element is a way to define a particular clip in a playlist
<TITLE>An Entry in a basic playlist</TITLE> Identifies the title of the playlist clip . It is different than the previous TITLE element because this one is nested within an ENTRY element. Windows Media Player displays this metadata as the clip title.
<AUTHOR>Microsoft Corporation</AUTHOR> The AUTHOR element identifies the author of the media clip . Windows Media Player displays this metadata as the clip AUTHOR.
<!-- This is a comment. Change the following path to point to your Windows media file --> A comment. Comments are visible only when the code is viewed, and are in the same format as XML comments.
<REF HREF = "mms://proseware.com/path/Yourfile.wma" /> Actual pointer to the media file. The REF element identifies the line as a pointer to media content, while the HREF attribute is the URL to the media file. In this case, the URL uses the MMS protocol, so it points to a Windows Media server.Media files on your media server are not usually kept in the same location as your HTML documents.
Note the use of the XML-like closing of the element , "/>", instead of "</REF>". Because this element does not have child elements, it closes itself.
</ENTRY> Specifies the end of the ENTRY element.
</ASX> Specifies the end of the playlist.

Creating Metafile Playlists

Example Playlists

Metafile Playlists

Windows Media Metafile Elements Reference

Windows Media Metafile Guide