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Metafile Extension Guidelines

A file name extension provides an independent software vendor (ISV) with information about the rendering requirements of an application that uses that particular extension, and enables content authors to target general types of players. For example, the .wma extension should be used for Jukebox-type applications.

Windows Media metafile extensions are used to identify the format of the Windows Media files that will be accessed. Windows Media metafiles that have .wax, .wvx, or .asx extensions access files with .wma (Windows Media Audio), .wmv (Windows Media Video), and .asf, (Windows Media file) extensions respectively. The metafiles will all have the ASX element tag at the beginning of the file, followed by "version" number. The .wma, .wmv, and .asf extensions identify the Windows Media compression technology used in creating the file.

The following table shows the media file types to be referenced by each type of metafile, .wax, .wvx, and .asx. The columns list media file extensions, the rows list metafile extensions. An X in a column indicates a media file type that can be referenced by a metafile with the file name extension in the leftmost column of that row.

Extension asf wma wmv
wvx X X X
wax X X  
asx X    

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