About the Task Wizard Sample

The Task Wizard Sample is an application written in Visual Basic. It includes several large screens that contain text- and check- boxes for gathering user input, as well as useful information to guide you through the process. When all the necessary parameters are filled in, click the Finish button, and an .asx file is generated. Depending on the task template used, the Task Wizard Sample can also generate a sample .htm file.

The number of tasks you can perform with .asx files is infinite. The Task Wizard Sample, however, is primarily a learning tool. To simplify the learning process, the Task Wizard Sample uses seven common templates. By creating files with the templates, studying the resulting .asx files in a text editor, and experimenting with cutting and pasting elements, you can gain a fairly thorough understanding of the possibilities. The following table describes the seven templates.

Template title	Description
Single ASF in a Standalone Player	Creates an .asx file that plays one .asf file. It also allows you to add text, which appears in Windows Media Player, and URLs, which are associated with click events on certain areas of the display.
Single ASF embedded in a Web page	In addition to creating an .asx file that contains all the elements of the Standalone Player template, this template creates a Web page with a simple embedded player.
Playlist in a standalone player	Creates an .asx file containing the text and URL elements of the two previous templates, and allows you to add one or more .asf files (clips) to a playlist. During playback, Windows Media Player plays through the list in the order you specify. You can change many of the graphic and text elements on a clip-by-clip basis.
Playlist embedded in a Web page	Same as the previous template except that a Web page is created containing a simple embedded instance of Windows Media Player.
Pre-existing ASX embedded in a Web page	Creates only a Web page, which points to an existing .asx file.
In-Stream Closed Captioning	Creates an .asx file and Web page that implement the In-Stream method of closed captioning. With this method, closed caption text must be built into the .asf file as a series of script commands, where the type string is "CAPTION", and command is the closed caption text. During playback, closed caption text appears on the Web page to the right of the embedded instance of Windows Media Player.
Out-of-Stream Closed Captioning	Creates an .asx file and Web page that implement the out-of-stream method of closed captioning. With this method, closed caption text is contained in a Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI, or .smi) text file. The .asx file locates the .smi and .asf files. The closed caption text is played back in the captioning window of Windows Media Player. For more information on the SAMI system, see Closed Captioning in the Windows Media Player Control SDK.

The source files for the Task Wizard Sample are installed on your computer when the Windows Media Technologies SDK is installed. The default installation path is C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\SDK\Samples\Task Wizard\Source.

Expanding on this Sample

The following examples show how you can extend the capabilities of the Task Wizard Sample by modifying the Visual Basic code source included in this SDK.

Create custom templates. As you integrate ASX scripting into your production process, you will find similarities in the .asx files you create. These similarities can be reduced to templates: strings of code and text that remain the same for every .asx file of a certain type. By modifying the Task Wizard Sample to use your custom templates, you can create .asx files that are more specific to your needs. For example, instead of using the templates that come with the Task Wizard Sample, you can create a template that builds specific playlists containing an introductory animation and ad banner that never change. The Task Wizard Sample uses a resource file for holding long text strings. The resource file keeps the code clean, and is useful when localizing the program.
Preview content. By adding a Windows Media Player control to the ASX settings page of the Task Wizard Sample, users can test the settings and make changes on the spot. Users can check text, links and graphics before building a final .asx file and quitting the wizard.
Create a custom program. This sample program can be extended to enable more advanced file-handling procedures. ASX automation can easily be built in to larger media authoring environments because it requires nothing more than simple text editing functions to create an .asx file.

For more information, see Using ASX Metafiles in the Windows Media Player Control SDK.

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