Audio Video IFilter is a content indexing filter for WMA, WMV and MP3 files. The IFilter is compatible with indexing services based on the Microsoft Search technology: Microsoft Indexing Service, Windows Desktop Search, Windows SharePoint Services. Audio Video IFilter extends the services capabilities to index the WMA, WMV, MP3 files providing content search for them. Audio Video IFilter extracts two kinds of text metadata: standard ASF files (WMA, WMV) metadata and ID3 tags from MP3 files. The ID3 tags is the de-Facto standard of storing metadata in the MP3 files.
Audio Video IFilter is a software component that provides benefits together with other Windows applications. With AimAtFile Fast File Search the IFilter helps you quickly find music and video files in your Home Collection. With Microsoft Indexing Service under Internet Information Server or with SharePoint Portal Server the IFilter lets you provide your site or portal visitors with a powerful search of multimedia content.
The indexing services can index some attributes of ASF and MP3 files in Windows XP via IPropertyStorage using built-in Null Filter but the Audio Video IFilter is more powerful. Audio Video IFilter extracts additional attributes (from MP3 ID3 tags especially) that are important for content search. It does not Extract unnecessary attributes. This feature decreases the index database size and increase the indexing and search performance and search accuracy. Audio Video IFilter provides the property mapping optimized for Windows Desktop Search. It presents the property set as a text contents that is useful for the file preview functionality.
