Why can't you Fast Forward, .ASF files?

[Razorwyre]

Title says it all, any reason why windows media player doesn't allow this?

 

[sohcrates]

i can actually fast forward about 50% of my .asf files in windows media player...but i would LOVE to get answer to this question for my other 50%!

i haven't seen this problem with any other movie file format.

 

[Shalmanese]

asf is streaming, your not meant to have it on your HD

there not designed to go anyway but forward at normal speed

 

[Scarpozzi]

Correct...but the real reason you can't fast forward is the compression and "decompression" by your player. The data is decoded in such a way that by the time your processor can actually figure out what address in the file it is, it gets lost somewhere trying to decode it. I've had files that are hours long and they've actually got "blips" in them. They skip from the blips forward or back from the position they're in. If you're lucky, you'll never have to deal with that... It's a pain just to get the file to start where it left off before it skipped.

 

[papasmurf]

To add to the above posts, depending on how the file was encoded, if the file is incomplete, that is you didn't finish the download or copy, it won't allow you to jump around anywhere in the file. This is the same for .avi and .rm files too. Sometimes if you're missing 1 byte it won't work.

 

[Zulu8]

use the old Media Player, it can fast forward rewind, whatever u want