First entry / Fun with Media Player SDK

Wednesday, July 2, 2003

English Sound

This entry may surprise some people I know that are reading the main feed every day - I didn't tell them I would start a blog... For everybody else some quick info about me: I'm 34 years old, started programming in 1983 on a TRS-80 Color Computer and got my first PC in 1989. I live in Bonn, Germany, working as a software developer for a local company. In my spare time I enjoy writing tools and macros, and - in many iterations over the last years, using different languages/technologies - a kind of DJ'ing software for sports events like basketball games. Currently I'm doing a complete rewrite in C#, using the windows media player 9 SDK.

So far, my experiences using the media player object, its properties, methods and events have been very good. But yesterday I ran into something rather strange.

Say you open a sound file like this:

objPlayer.URL=@"D:\MySound.wav";

and now you want to know the duration

double dDuration=objPlayer.currentMedia.duration;

but dDuration is 0. If you play the sound file, currentMedia.duration contains the correct value. But you want the duration before starting playback. Ok, next try:

IWMPMedia objMedia = objPlayer.newMedia(filename); objPlayer.currentMedia=objMedia double dDuration=objPlayer.currentMedia.duration;

Again, dDuration is 0. Now try this:

IWMPMedia objMedia = objPlayer.newMedia(filename); double dDummy=objMedia.duration; objPlayer.currentMedia=objMedia double dDuration=objPlayer.currentMedia.duration;

And... dDuration contains the correct value!

Took me some time to figure out that one...

11 Comments

Roland -

You may want to check out the DirectX SDK, especially DirectSound. I've found it both easier to work with and more powerful than MS's other media interfaces.

Jon Galloway - Wednesday, July 2, 2003 6:11:00 PM

For the stuff I do right now, the media player is surely enough (my old app even worked fine using the old MCI API), but I have some ideas that definitely could benefit from having more control and lower latency on audio playback.

Do you have any specific resources (articles, links) you could recommend for starting with using DirectSound in C#?

Roland Weigelt - Thursday, July 3, 2003 2:04:00 AM

funny, cause I run into the same problem. my solution is a timer (I know it might sound a bit awkward - but hell! it's working :) )

Tel Aviv - Sunday, August 31, 2003 11:01:00 PM

Thanks for sharing this Roland. Saved me from having to implement a filthy hack.

-Fergal

(Irish Downunder)

Fergal O' Ceallaigh - Friday, December 5, 2003 7:55:00 AM

Thanks. Solved my problem immediately.

Ryan - Friday, December 26, 2003 4:00:00 AM

Great tip.

Worked like a champ first time out...

Thanks

Tony - Monday, March 8, 2004 7:24:00 PM

Thanks Man.. Great piece of info...

Vikram - Friday, June 4, 2004 12:41:00 PM

Your solution doesn't work in the windows media player 10 SDK. Have you tried using WMP-10?

Henry - Thursday, August 31, 2006 3:11:08 AM

Henry: No, I haven't worked with WMP10 yet. Thanks for the info!

WeigeltRo - Thursday, August 31, 2006 8:22:47 AM

this code is not run in C# and does not have these type of code in c#.
so if u have related code then pls send krishna_bca3@yahoo.com

thanks a lots
sender

Hare Krishna - Wednesday, January 24, 2007 9:44:36 AM

Please take a look at the samples of the Media Player SDK on how to use the Windows Media Player from C#. This blog entry (which isn't up-to-date anyway as it was written in 2003, for WMP9) was not meant as a general introduction to the topic.

WeigeltRo - Wednesday, January 24, 2007 12:18:03 PM

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