Advanced Streaming Format

ASF Specification

The ASF Specification was last updated on February 26, 1998

February 26, 1998 Latest	November 12, 1997 Archived	September 30, 1997 Archived
Online	Online	Online

If you would like to comment on the ASF Specification, please send an e-mail message to ASF@listserv.msn.com. Make sure that your mail makes specific wording suggestions and includes a rationale.

ASF Objective

The Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) is a powerful, extensible, synchronized multimedia file format. It expands upon existing formats (for example, WAV and AVI) and incorporates new media types, scalable codecs, improved editibility, media stream prioritization, and enhanced indexing. It is designed to support the streaming of multimedia over a network from a media server or from an HTTP server as well as for local playback, all over a wide range of bandwidth and usage scenarios. Content compatibility is a design point for ASF: The explicit goal of ASF is to supercede legacy formats (for example, AVI and WAV) in order to provide a basis for industry-wide multimedia interoperability, with ASF being adopted by all major streaming solution providers and multimedia content generation (tools) companies.

ASF Team

A team of industry leaders defined ASF. The Specification has been enhanced through a public review process resulting in a text that has been submitted to an international standards body for formal ratification. Information about the standardization submissions are found at http://www.microsoft.com/asf/standards.htm.

Deliverables

The ASF deliverables are the ASF multimedia file specification, a list of base media types (for interoperation between ASF-compliant systems), public reviews, and a reference implementation (the ASF SDK).