Using the Windows Media Player Control on Handheld Devices

Multimedia Support in Windows CE

Recently, facing up to the fact that Windows CE 5.0 is coming soon on real devices, it is wonderful to understand that PDAs already have their own history. Mobile technologies made unbelievable progress during the last 10 years. The very first Windows CE-powered devices were an adventure in terms of capabilities and programming. The only sign of multimedia features was an opportunity to play WAV files. The latest Windows CE handhelds come with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, which has many wonderful features and is built on the same platform as its big desktop brother. Now, you may add rich multimedia support to your applications, including playing video and audio files, displaying pictures, and so forth. You will find additional information about available SDKs and other related topics in the "References" section at the end of this article.

This article doesn't pretend to be a full guide for WMP SDK, far from this. My goal is to introduce WMP common techniques, so that you'll be able to use them easily in your own code.

Windows Media Player Object Model Overview

WMSDK offers you a lot of different interfaces, but not all of them are supported on Windows Mobile platforms. Below, I've put together a short description of what you can use:

As you can see, this is really only a small part of desktop definitions, but it is still useful anyway.

Creating a First Application

You will start with a simple ATL application, where you easily can create a control container window. The code snippet below uses a standard ATL technique to display the Windows Media Player control:

LRESULT CWMPHost::OnCreate(UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam,
                           BOOL& bHandled)
{
    AtlAxWinInit();
    CComPtr<IAxWinHostWindow>           spHost;
    CComPtr<IConnectionPointContainer>  spConnectionContainer;
    CComWMPEventDispatch                *pEventListener = NULL;
    CComPtr<IWMPEvents>                 spEventListener;
    HRESULT                             hr;
    RECT                                rcClient;
    m_dwAdviseCookie = 0;
    ...
    // create window
    GetClientRect(&rcClient);
    m_wndView.Create(m_hWnd, rcClient, NULL,
        WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_CLIPCHILDREN | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS);
    if (NULL == m_wndView.m_hWnd)
        goto FAILURE;
    // load OCX in window
    hr = m_wndView.QueryHost(&spHost);
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    hr = spHost->CreateControl(CComBSTR(_T("WMPlayer.OCX")),
                               m_wndView, 0);
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    hr = m_wndView.QueryControl(&m_spWMPPlayer);
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    // start listening to events
    hr = CComWMPEventDispatch::CreateInstance(&pEventListener);
    spEventListener = pEventListener;
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    hr = m_spWMPPlayer->QueryInterface(__uuidof(IConnectionPointContainer),
                                       (void**)&spConnectionContainer);
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    // See whether OCX supports the IWMPEvents interface
    hr = spConnectionContainer->FindConnectionPoint(__uuidof(IWMPEvents),
                                                    &m_spConnectionPoint);
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    hr = m_spConnectionPoint->Advise(spEventListener, &m_dwAdviseCookie);
    if (FAILMSG(hr))
        goto FAILURE;
    return 0;
FAILURE:
    ::PostQuitMessage(0);
    return 0;
}

All you need to to is to create the control's window, obtain an IWMPPlayer interface pointer, and sign up to WMP events. ATL is usually the easier way to perform such tasks than MFC; nevertheless, you may use MFC as well. As a result, your application will be able to play Windows Media files such as WMA and WMV.

The WMP control has a number of methods that allow you to control its behavior. For example, you can start playing a media file as follows:

LRESULT CWMPHost::OnFileOpen(WORD wNotifyCode, WORD wID,
                             HWND hWndCtl, BOOL& bHandled)
{
    CFileOpenDlg dlgOpen;
    HRESULT      hr;
    if (dlgOpen.DoModal(m_hWnd) == IDOK)
    {
        hr = m_spWMPPlayer->put_URL(dlgOpen.m_bstrName);
        if (FAILMSG(hr))
            return 0;
    }
    return 0;
}

Mobile samples for Windows Media Player 10 provide a full example the of controls' usage.

Using WMP OCX from a Web Application

In case you are using a Web browser, hosting WMP is the easiest thing (this is a SDK sample):

<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
   <OBJECT>
      ID=wmpocx
      WIDTH=200
      HEIGHT=150
      CLASSID="clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6"
      TYPE="application/x-oleobject"
      VIEWASTEXT>
      <PARAM name="uimode" value="none">
   </OBJECT>
<BR>
<script for="wmpocx" event="PlayStateChange(NewState)"
                     language="JScript">ClipPlayState(NewState);
</script>
<script for="wmpocx" event="Error()"
                     language="JScript">StopPlayer();
</script>
<p>
<a href=# OnClick='PlayClip("\storage card\webapp\glass.wmv",
                            ImgVideoPlay, true)'>
   <IMG id="ImgVideoPlay" src="bt_play.gif" border="0"></a> Video
<br>
<a href=# OnClick='PlayClip("\storage card\webapp\jeanne.wma",
                            ImgAudioPlay, false)'>
   <IMG id="ImgAudioPlay" src="bt_play.gif" border="0"></a> Audio
<br>
Play state sequence
<br>
<input type="text" id="PlayStateSequence" width=30>
<SCRIPT language="JScript">
<!--
var CurrentPlayImage = null;
var bVideo = null;
var bWasBuffering = false;
function StopPlayer()
{
   wmpocx.controls.stop();
   wmpocx.close();
   if (CurrentPlayImage != null)
   {
      CurrentPlayImage.src = "bt_play.gif";
   }
   bWasBufferring = false;
}
function ClipPlayState(NewState)
{
   PlayStateSequence.value = PlayStateSequence.value + NewState
                           + " ";
   switch(NewState)
   {
   case 1:    // stopped
   if (bWasBuffering)
   {
      bWasBufferring = false;
      if (CurrentPlayImage != null)
      {
         CurrentPlayImage.src = "bt_play.gif";
      }
   }
      break;
   case 6:    // buffering
      bWasBufferring = true;
      if (CurrentPlayImage != null)
      {
         CurrentPlayImage.src = "bt_load.gif";
      }
      break;
   case 9:     // transitioning
   case 11:    // reconnecting
      bWasBufferring = false;
      break;
   case 3:    // playing
      if (bWasBufferring)
      {
         if (CurrentPlayImage != null)
         {
            CurrentPlayImage.src = "bt_stop.gif";
         }
      if (bVideo)
         {
            wmpocx.fullScreen = true;
         }
      }
      break;
   default:
   }
}
function PlayClip(url, img, video)
{
   if (wmpocx.playState == 3 && bVideo != null && bVideo != video)
   {
      return;
   }
   bVideo = video;
   CurrentPlayImage = img;
   if (wmpocx.playState == 3)
   {
      StopPlayer();
   }
   else
   {
      PlayStateSequence.value = "";
      if (CurrentPlayImage != null)
      {
            CurrentPlayImage.src = "bt_load.gif";
      }
      wmpocx.URL = url;
   }
}
-->
</SCRIPT>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Working with Older Versions of the WMP Control

If you have a handheld device without WMP 10, this is yet not the end of the world. You still have an opportunity to use WMP OCX of version 8 for Pocket PC, which has much fewer amazing features, but can serve your needs as well. For exercise purposes, I've created a simple project to illustrate how it works in an MFC environment. The small code snippet below proves that it is pretty similar to the ATL way:

BOOL CWMP8SampleDlg::OnInitDialog()
{
   CDialog::OnInitDialog();
   // Set the icon for this dialog. The framework does this
   // automatically when the application's main window is not
   // a dialog
   SetIcon(m_hIcon, TRUE);     // Set big icon
   SetIcon(m_hIcon, FALSE);    // Set small icon
   CenterWindow(GetDesktopWindow());    // center to the hpc screen
   CRect rect;
   m_Panel.GetClientRect(&rect);
   if ( m_PlayerWnd.CreateControl(__uuidof(WMP),L"",
                                  WS_VISIBLE|WS_CHILD,rect,
                                  &m_Panel,AFX_IDW_PANE_FIRST) )
   {
      LPUNKNOWN lpUnk = m_PlayerWnd.GetControlUnknown();
      HRESULT hr = lpUnk->QueryInterface(__uuidof(IWMP),(void**)
                                         &m_spWMPPlayer);
   }
   else
   {
      AfxMessageBox(L"Failed to create WMP control");
      ::PostQuitMessage(0);
      return 0;
   }
   if ( m_spWMPPlayer )
   {
      m_WMPEvents.m_pMainDlg = (CWMP8SampleDlg*)this;
      CComPtr<IConnectionPointContainer> spConnectionContainer;
      HRESULT hr = m_spWMPPlayer->
                   QueryInterface( IID_IConnectionPointContainer,
                                  (void**)&spConnectionContainer );
      if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
      {
         hr = spConnectionContainer->
              FindConnectionPoint( __uuidof(_IWMPEvents),
                                  &m_spConnectionPoint );
      }
      if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
      {
         hr = m_spConnectionPoint->Advise((IDispatch*)&m_WMPEvents,
                                          &m_dwAdviseCookie );
      }
      else
      {
         AfxMessageBox(L"Failed to get WMP control events");
         ::PostQuitMessage(0);
         return 0;
      }
      if ( FAILED(SetupWMP()) )
      {
         AfxMessageBox(L"Failed to setup WMP control");
         ::PostQuitMessage(0);
         return 0;
      }
   }
   m_spWMPPlayer->Stop();
   return TRUE;    // return TRUE  unless you set the focus to a
                   // control
}

Conclusion

With WMP control handy, your application gets additional strength in an interaction with the end user. Such multimedia support may create new added value for any product. Windows CE 5.0 brings you long-awaited support for DirectShow API to render video, but this is a good topic for future articles.

Download

Download the accompanying code's zip file here

References

Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 SDK

Microsoft Windows Media Player 8.x for Pocket PC

Mobile WMP 10 samples

About the Author

Alex Gusev started to play with mainframes at the end of the 1980s, using Pascal and REXX, but soon switched to C/C++ and Java on different platforms. When mobile PDAs seriously rose their heads in the IT market, Alex did it too. Now, he works at an international retail software company as a team leader of the Mobile R department, making programmers' lives in the mobile jungles a little bit simpler.