Playing NetShow content is easy. However, to truly take advantage of the
NetShow player and its capabilities, you might want some additional tips and
tricks and troubleshooting advice.
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Installing the NetShow Player in Windows 98
If you choose the standard installation of Windows 98, the NetShow player will not be installed automatically. It is easy to install later, however. To install NetShow Player after installing Windows 98:
There are two ways of using NetShow Player to play content, as follows:
Playing NetShow content is very straightforward. Normally, a user clicks on a link to the content, and it starts playing. This allows the user to listen to or watch the content and continue to browse the Web or run other applications.
Markers are like bookmarks in the file. They can allow you to quickly skip from one part of the content to another. This feature becomes very important to developers who wish to create interactive applications using NetShow because they can use VisualBasic Script or JavaScript to present questions to the user, and respond to the selection given by skipping directly to a particular part in the ASF file. For example, a developer writing an interactive training application could present material, and at a specific point in the file, insert a URL flip command in the stream that flips the user's browser to an HTML page with quiz questions on it. Based on the answer to the quiz question, the developer can automatically make the user repeat a section if he or she answers incorrectly or continue to the next section if the answer is wrong.
To see whether the person who created an ASF file used markers, look for the tick marks underneath the slider bar on the player. If you hover your mouse over the tick marks, you can see their description:
Notice the "Road Work Ahead" label that appears when the mouse hovers over the corresponding marker.
If you would like to see a marker list, right-click on the ASF while it is playing, and select Marker List. You will see a list such as the following:
You can skip to a specific marker by clicking on the marker number and clicking the Go To Marker button. This feature is especially convenient for content that is embedded in an HTML page with no controls showing. It allows you to see the marker list without the controls showing.
After users learn that playing content over the Internet means compromises in the size of images, frame rate, or clarity of the images, they often become curious about the bandwidth the file uses for adequate playback. They also learn how to find out more about the ASF file in case they are having problems getting it to run. Here's how to find out the details of the ASF file, even if it is embedded in an HTML page. First, right-click on the content while it's playing. Then select Properties.
You will be presented with a separate window with multiple tabs to choose from. The General tab details the ASF title, author, copyright, rating and description. The Details tab gives you the following information:
The Buffering option can be used to decrease or increase the amount of time it takes before content begins to play. Normally the content developer sets the buffering time and users do not need to change it. However, if network conditions make play-back quality unacceptable, you can increase the buffer time to try to improve performance. Most content is set to buffer for between 5 and 10 seconds.
Shows what protocol is being used between the player and the NetShow server or HTTP server or file server running the content. Choices are File for play from a local drive or file server, MMS or HTTP for play from a NetShow server, or HTTP for play from an HTTP server like Microsoft's Internet Information Server or some other HTTP server (like a UNIX server).
Selections in the Protocol area:
Shows the server or share location for the file or stream. Bandwidth shows how much bandwidth the file will take up when playing back. In the example above, it takes 72,000 bps or a LAN connection or dual-channel ISDN connection. Error Correction shows whether the file was created with error correction features enabled.
If play back of a file is inconsistent or the picture or sound is poor, checking the Statistics tab can be helpful.
On networks like the Internet, where varying traffic conditions mean varying performance, you can see the reception quality and numbers of packets lost vary when the Internet gets busy. When the connection is poor, you see the red part of a pie chart that gets bigger and smaller with connection variances.
Troubleshooting the NetShow Player
If you encounter problems when playing back content, they are usually in one of these areas:
To check if you have the right codec installed:
Distorted audio and video is usually caused by one of two things: large amounts of network traffic, or the audio and video were created that way.
To determine if network traffic is the problem:
If you are not losing any packets and there is no significant network traffic, then the content was likely created that way. Take into consideration the type of ASF content you are watching. Video requires considerably more network bandwidth than image flipping, and the higher the audio quality, the more bandwidth is required.
When using dial-up networking to gain access to a network, you can encounter some problems. These problems are usually caused by incorrect settings for the proxy server the firewall is using.
To verify that your proxy settings are correct, on the Advanced tab of the NetShow Player Properties dialog box, for the HTTP protocol, select No proxy.
One possible reason that you may get this message is that your NetShow Player settings may conflict with your Internet Explorer settings. This occurs if you adjust the NetShow Player protocol settings in the Advanced Settings tab and do not restart NetShow Player. Clicking Apply does not cause these changes to take effect.
For more information, see the NetShow downloads page at
http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/download.htm, which includes NetShow
Software Development Kits, online documentation, and the Content Creation
Authoring Guide. The Content Creation Authoring Guide is a detailed resource
for people who want to understand how to create NetShow content for the highest
quality and performance.
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