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Windows Media Rights Manager: Requirements and Installation Guide

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Click here to access rightsmn.exe

Click here to access rigtsmna.exe

This guide includes the following information:

Hardware and software requirements.
Lists the requirements for hardware and software that must be met before you can install Windows Media Rights Manager.

File requirements.
Describes the required media and image files formats, outlines the encryption process, and discusses watermarking and pre-encoding options.

Installing Windows Media TM Rights Manager.
Describes the Windows Media Rights Manager installation process.

Quick Start Guide.
Tells how to get a Windows Media Rights Manager Web site up and running quickly.

Hardware and software requirements
Windows Media Rights Manager requires the following hardware and software. For downloads and information about the software listed, follow the links below.

PC with Pentium class or later processor

5 MB of available hard-disk space

Microsoft® Windows NT® Server operating system version 4.0 with Service Pack 4 (SP4).

Note: We strongly recommend that you run the Web server on an NTFS partition. When you install Windows Media Rights Manager on an NTFS partition, Access Control Lists (ACLs) are set up to restrict access to Windows Media Packager, the tool you use to administer your Windows Media Rights Manager Web site. When you run Windows Media Packager, you log in using the same account as the one that was used during installation.

If you set up Windows Media Rights Manager on a FAT partition, anyone who can access the Web server computer can administer the Web site.

For more information about NTFS and FAT partitions, see the Windows NT documentation.

Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack with Service Pack 1, which includes IIS 4.0

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 is preferred, or 4.01 with Service Pack 1

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0

SQL Server Client Network Utility must use TCP/IP rather than Named Pipes.

You must have an SQL Server logon account that uses SQL Server authentication and has privileges to create databases.

Microsoft Windows Media Tools 4.0

Microsoft Windows Media Player 6.2 or later

Optional
If you want to stream media items:

Microsoft Windows Media Services 4.0

If your SQL Server is on a different computer than Windows Media Rights Manager:

Microsoft Data Access Components 2.0

File requirements
After you have installed Windows Media Rights Manager, you will create your Web site and encrypt and package your media items using Windows Media Packager. You will need to have at least one media file to start your Web site.

Requirements are as follows:

Media files must be in WAV, MP3, or pre-encoded ASF format.

Images must be in GIF, JPG, or BMP format.

A banner image, such as a company logo, is displayed in Windows Media Player when a media item is played. When the user clicks the banner image, the Web browser opens a corresponding URL, such as the company's Web site.

You can also specify an image to display, such as a song's album cover, with items on the downloads page. Copy the images you want to use into the \image directory in your Web site's local root directory (for example, c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wm\content\images) before adding media items to your Web site.

Figure 1 shows the order in which Windows Media Rights Manager processes media and image files to produce an encrypted and packaged .wma file:

Figure 1: The process of creating encrypted and packaged media files

You can also use third-party tools to prepare your media files before adding them to your Web site.

Watermarking media files. Watermarking is a process that lets you add information to your media files, such as an identification number, the copyright owner's name, the date, etc., for tracking and fraud-detection purposes.

Pre-encoding media files. You can pre-encode your media files to add JPG image files to songs, to control the encoding process, or to shorten the process of encrypting and packaging files. You can use Windows Media Author to pre-encode files (see Using Windows Media Encoder in Windows Media Tools Help). For more information about media files, see the section entitled "The Input File" in Windows Media Rights Manager Help.

Installing Windows Media Rights Manager
When you install Windows Media Rights Manager, the Setup application performs the following tasks:

Installs Windows Media Rights Manager server and administration components to the directory you specify.

Installs your Web site pages to the directory you specify.

Requests the domain name for your Web site, such as www.mysite.com, where mysite is your domain name.

Creates an SQL database for Windows Media Rights Manager data. You must provide the name of a database (for example, Music) and the name of your SQL Server. Also, you must provide the logon name and password of an SQL logon account; this account must use SQL Server authentication and have privileges to create databases.

After Windows Media Rights Manager Setup has completed, start Windows Media Packager to create your Web site: click Start, point to Programs, point to Windows Media, point to Rights Manager, and then click Windows Media Packager. If you installed Windows Media Packager on an NTFS file system partition, you must first log on using your Windows NT account.

Note: The first time you run Windows Media Packager, you will be prompted to acquire a certificate from Microsoft to run Windows Media License Service and issue licenses. Follow the on-screen instructions. After you accept the agreement, Microsoft will send you an e-mail message containing a link. Click this link to automatically install the new certificate. You must repeat this process periodically; Windows Media Packager will prompt you to acquire a new certificate 10 days before the current one is scheduled to expire.

Quick Start Guide
To get your Windows Media Rights Manager Web site up and running quickly, do the following:

  1. Make sure you meet the installation requirements.

    You'll need Windows NT Server 4.0 with the Option Pack, Internet Explorer, SQL Server 7, Windows Media Tools, and Windows Media Player. Many of these items can be downloaded right from the Microsoft Web site.

  2. Install Windows Media Rights Manager.

    You'll need to provide a few pieces of information during setup:

    The domain name for your Web site (this is the first part of the URL that people will type to access your Web site). But if you haven't registered a domain name yet, don't worry—you can do it later, and update the settings in Windows Media Rights Manager.

    The name of your SQL Server, and the name of the database you'll use to store information about your media Web site (such as MyMusic).

    The SQL account for accessing the database. You'll need to specify a login name and password to access the database, which should be an SQL account, since Windows Media Rights Manager uses SQL Authentication. For example, if you use the SQL system account, the login would be sa, and the password would be whatever you set for the account.

  3. After you run the Setup program, Windows Media Rights Manager creates HTML pages and a database for your media Web site, and installs Windows Media Packager (the application that you'll use to manage it all).

  4. Get some songs or videos to put on your media Web site.

    If you don't have anything ready yet, you can create a sample file quickly just to see how Windows Media Rights Manager works. For example, create a WAV file using a microphone and the Microsoft Sound Recorder (double-click Sndrec32.exe in your Windows directory), or for now, just use a WAV file that comes with Windows.

  5. Start Windows Media Packager.

    Click Start, point to Programs, point to Windows Media, point to Rights Manager, and then click Windows Media Packager.

    Note: The first time you run Windows Media Packager, you are prompted to acquire a certificate from Microsoft to run Windows Media License Service and issue licenses. Follow the on-screen instructions. After you accept the agreement, Microsoft will send you an e-mail message containing a link. Click this link to automatically install the new certificate.

    Add a media item to your Web site.

    1. Click the Add button, located on the left side of the Content List.

    2. Set the basic properties for your media item:

      In the Input filename and path box, type the location of the song or video you want to add. For example, type C:\Windows\Media\Ding.wav.

      In the Output filename box, type the name you want to use for the resulting file, such as Sample. Windows Media Rights Manager automatically uses the correct extension.

      In the Title box, type a title for the song, such as Sample Song.

      Accept the rest of the default settings for now; click the Save button on the left side of the window.

    3. The item you just added is now displayed in the Content List.

  6. Test your Web site.

    Open your Web browser to the downloads page of your site. Either 1) click the Rights Manager Web site link, which is located above the Content List tab, or 2) on the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Windows Media, point to Rights Manager, and then click Your Web Site.

    The media item you added appears as a link; click it to download the encrypted media item to your hard drive (for example, save it to your desktop for easy access).

  7. Test the license acquisition process.

    Find the file you just saved, and double-click it to play it. Since you don't have a license yet, your Web browser will display the registration page. Enter your e-mail address, and then fill out the other registration information. When you're finished, the Web browser displays a link to the licensed media item—click the link to play the item.

  8. View the statistics information for your site.

    Go back to Windows Media Packager and click the Statistics tab. The first tab under Statistics is Site Statistics, showing you general information about the traffic on your Web site. The statistics for your Web site show that you have one media item available for download, one person has registered on your Web site, one item has been downloaded, and one license has been issued.

And that's all there is to it!

But you can do a lot more with Windows Media Rights Manager. For example, you can:

Customize the pages in your Web site to use the text, colors, layout, fonts, and graphics that you want.

Specify information, images, and URLs for the media items you add. This information will be available to the consumer when they play items in Windows Media Player.

Organize your media items by genre, so that consumers can easily find items they want.

Sign your media items with a certificate, so that when consumers play your media items, they'll know the content hasn't been tampered with.

To find out more about the features of Windows Media Rights Manager and how to configure it to run the way you want, see the Windows Media Rights Manager Help:

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Windows Media, point to Rights Manager, and then click Windows Media Rights Manager Documentation.