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MCI MultiMedia Command String Tutorial – A Step by Step Guide for Visual Basic and
VB.NET

Published by Jason on December 17, 2007 08:13 pm under - (.5.0,6.0), - (.5.0/6.0), - (.5.0/6.0), - (.NET 05/08 Only), -
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► Code VB Net ► Play Device ► C# Tutorial ► Source Code

Update: August 16, 2011 - I made some major format changes with this article. It should be much easier to read and follow.
It is definitely a much smoother layout. Also this article will work for Visual Basic 2008 and MCI for Visual Basic 2010.

Purpose of this Tutorial: To explain how you can use the Windows MCI Command Interface to create your OWN media
applications including: Music Players, Movie Players, CD Players and more. File formats include: MP3 files, Wav files,
MPEG, WMA, WMV, and More! Hopefully before you finish this article, you will have a better understanding on how you
can make your own media applications.

Visual Basic 5.0/6.0 Information: While this tutorial’s source code is made with Visual Basic.NET, Visual Basic
2005/2008 and VB 2010 in mind, the principals are the same for all languages. The biggest change to make the example code
work in VB 6/5 is to change the “Integer ” variables and parameters to “Long“ value types instead. I have a link to a tutorial in
Word format you can download with VB 6.0 below.

—————————————————————————————————–
Note: The tutorial in Microsoft Word RTF format and a example application is available for download at this link.

Introduction

With this tutorial you can learn how to code the MCI Device via the Mci Command String Interface. I will not give you much
specific code but show you how to write your OWN code to suit your needs. That way you will learn how to program using
the MCI Command String Interface. The MCI Interface is fairly powerful and can be very useful. You can play almost any
movie file available. Including DVD Movie’s (If you have a Video Card that has hardware support for dvd playback or a
software decoder installed), Play Divx Movie’s(Must have the Divx Codec installed), AVI movies, QuickTime movies and
more. Can also play a wide range of music files including MP3, WAVE, MIDI, ASF, and more. In this tutorial I will show you
how to program the Mci Device so you would have the ability to make a feature rich media player to your exact specifications.
As for the exercise in this tutorial I will show you how to make a music player with a few features. If I get good response’s and
feedback I may create another tutorial in the future. I am pretty sure though, after you read and study this tutorial you will be
able to create your own music and movie player with ease. Some of you may be familiar with my various Media Library’s
(csMusicLibrary, csMovieLibrary, ect…) Almost ALL of them are based on the mciSendString command interface. So, you
can really see how powerful this interface can be.

Note: I didn’t go through by over my writing with a fine toothed comb. So, there could be some mistakes.

———————————————————————————————

Lets get some Documentation

Start out by going to: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712587.aspx– website, then click on the: ‘Multimedia
Command Strings’ link if it doesn’t go directly to that page. Go ahead and look over some of the documented MCISendString
Commands available. For example: Click on the ‘open’ command at the left side of the webpage. Scroll down alittle on the
right side of the page and you will see the documented device types and the device flags available for that device type. Scroll
down alittle more and it will explain what the meaning of each device flag is for. For example: On the same ‘open’ page, scroll
down till you find the waveaudio device listing. Look at the column to the right and you will see the available flags and the
meanings that will work with the waveaudio device. Scroll down to the Value section listings of the page and find the ‘buffer
buffer_size’ flag and look to the right and it explains what it is for and what it does. So, now that we’ve got that out of the
way, lets get started with programming the Mci Device.

Note: The mpegvideo device driver is not documented at the msdn webpage. We can still do quite alot with it since alot of
the commands from the digitalvideo device and waveaudio device will work with the mpegvideo device. The MpegVideo
device type would be the Device Driver of choice for most of our multi-media needs since it will play alot of the movie and
music formats out there.

———————————————————————————————-
 What is mciSendString?

The first step you will want to do is add:

Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" (ByVal

- to the declarations section of our form. The return value of the mciSendString function will be a number. It will return
different numbers for different errors or return a 0 if the command was successful. Example: Say we made a variable;

Dim retVal As Integer

We would use our mciSendString function in this manner…

retVal = mciSendString("Open " & filename & " alias movie", 0, 0, 0)

- retVal would contain a number returned by our Mci Device to let us know what happened. More on that below. I will briefly
go over each parameter of the mciSendString function.

The lpstrCommand parameter is a string that specifys the MCI command string and flag. In other words this parameter would
be our command that we pass to the MCI Device. Like in our paragraph above, open would be a command string that we
passed to the MCI Device. It tells the MCI Device to do something. The command string could also have flags associated
with it. More on that below in the tutorial.

The lpstrReturnString parameter is a buffer that receives the return information. Example: If we used the status command
string and used the position flag, lpstrReturnString would contain the position information of the music or movie we are
playing. We would just create a string variable with a character buffer.

Example:

Dim returnData As String = Space(128)

ReturnData is now a String with a 128 Space buffer.

We would put ReturnData in the parameter and it will receive our position value.
The uReturnLength parameter is the size, in characters of the lpstrReturnString parameter. If we used

Dim returnData As String = Space(128)

- for our lpstrReturnString parameter. Then the size we would put for the uReturnLength parameter would be 128 or you
can put Len(ReturnData).

The hwndCallback parameter you will most likely never use. It would contain the Handle to to a callback window if the
Notify flag was used in our command string. Just set this parameter to 0.

Note: If the command string does not return a value in the lpstrReturnString parameter then you can set the
lpstrReturnString, uReturnLength, hwndCallback parameter to “0″. More on that further in the tutorial.

———————————————————————————————–

What is mciGetErrorString?

OK, the second step you would want to do is add:

Private Declare Function mciGetErrorString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciGetErrorStringA"

- to the declarations of the form. This is a very useful function for programming the Mci Device. This will convert the number
returned by our retVal variable (from the mciSendString function) into something that we will be able to understand alittle more.
It will give us a brief description of what happened. I will briefly go over each parameter in this function.

The dwError parameter will contain our return value from our mciSendString function.

Example:

Say we used retVal as our variable to recieve the return value of our mciSendString function. In the dwError parameter we
would put in the RetVal varaiable.

The lpstrBuffer parameter will contain the string value of our dwError parameter.

Example: Say we had

Dim GetError As String = Space(128)

If you put GetError in the lpstrBuffer parameter, then GetErrorwould receive the error string.

The uLength parameter is the character length of the dwError parameter.

Example: Say we used the above GetError string variable. We would create the string to have a buffer of 128 characters.

Dim GetError As String = Space(128)

So, in the uLength parameter we would put 128 or you can put Len(GetError). Either way will work just fine.

———————————————————————————————–

Write your own Music Player

Let start doing alittle MCI Programming by making a simple mp3/wave player. Put 4 command buttons, 3 labels, and a timer
on the form. With the first command button name it btnPlay set the .Text property to “Play”, the second button name btnStop
and set the .Text property to “Stop”, the third button, name it btnPause and set the .Text property to “Pause”, the fourth name
btnClose and set the .Text property to “Close”; name one of the labels lblPosition and will be used for the position status,
name the second label lblLength and will be used for the length, and the third name lblError will be used to give us our Mci
error status(Make the label fairly big because it could have a long explanation.) The timer will give the position status of the
music every second, so set the interval to 1000.

Pretty much always the first step in programming the Mci Device is starting with the open command string, since it is where
we select the device type we want to use and create the alias we want to use. So go to the webpage I stated at the beginning
of this tutorial and find the ‘open’ command string and click on it to read the documentation. Look over our available flags. We
will want to use 2 of the flags. The type device_type*(note below) and alias device_alias*(note below) flag. The next step
you want to do is select the file you want to play. One annoying thing about the Mci Device is that it has a hard time with long
filenames, so you will either have to convert the filepath and name to the shortpath of the file or a easier and recommended way
is just putting quotes around your filepath and name. The way to do this is first select the file you want to play. Then wrap the
filepath and name in quotes.

Example:

Dim fileName As String = Chr(34) & "C:\MP3 Music\mysound.mp3" & Chr(34)

That will wrap the filepath in quotations. ( Chr(34) is the code for ” *Quotes* ) Of course, change the path and filename to a
music file you have on your computer. Each time you use the open command, you will want to put the quotes ” ” around the
file you want to play. Ok, so now that we have selected the file we want to play and put the quotes around the path, lets start
programming the Mci Device. Put this in the declarations section of our form.

'Will store our return value from the mciSendString function.

 Dim retVal As Integer

'This variable will contain the data from the lpstrReturnString parameter. It will ha
Dim returnData As String = Space(128)

'Will store our return string from the mciGetErrorString function. With a buffer of 1
Dim errorString As String = Space(128)

'Will contain True or False if our mciGetErrorString was successful at determining ou

'from the mciSendString function.
Dim errorSuccess As Boolean

In the btnPlay button put:

'Replace the path and filename' with file that you have.
fileName = Chr(34) & "C:\MP3 Music\mysound.mp3" & Chr(34)

retVal = mciSendString("open " & fileName & " type mpegvideo alias oursong", 0, 0, 0)

O.k. Lets break this down. Our retVal variable will contain the return value of the ‘mciSendString command’. The open
command will open our fileName using the mpegvideo device type and create a alias named oursong.

*Note: The type flag can be optional. The Mci Device is usually very good about auto-selecting the correct device driver of
our specified file.

*Note Again: The alias flag can also be optional. I highly recommend using it so you don’t have to keep referring to your
device by the fileName variable. Just use oursong to refer to our opened device. Or any other name to refer to the device.

To see if the Mci Device was successful lets call our mciGetErrorString function. In the same command button below the
code we already put in add:

errorSuccess = mciGetErrorString(retVal, errorString, 128)

O.k. Lets break this down. Our errorSuccess variable will contain the return boolean value of our mciGetErrorString
function. It will contain either “True” if it was successful or “False” if it was not successful. The retVal variable we used
contains the return value from our mciSendString function.

Lets get the description of our error if one was created. In the same command button type in:

lblError.Text = "Error Status: " & errorString

Run the program and press the “Play” button. lblError should read “The Specified Command Was Carried Out.” That means
that everything went smooth and is O.K.

Now goto the webpage again and find the close command string. In the btnClose button type:

retVal = mciSendString("close oursong", 0, 0, 0)

errorSuccess = mciGetErrorString(retVal, errorString, 128)

O.k. Lets break this down. You should already know what the retVal variable returns. So, I won’t go over that again. What
the close command does is close either a specified device identifier(Alias) or you can close all device identifiers(Alias’s) by
using the all flag. So, what we just told the Mci Device to do is close our oursong device from memory. Notice that the other
3 parameters are “0″ zero? Well, since the close command does not return anything we can just set the parameters to “0″.
You should already know what the mciSendErrorString does so I won’t go over that again.

Now run the program again and press the play button twice. lblError should now read “The specified alias is already being
used in this application. Use a unique alias.” The error string returned should be self-explanatory, but I will explain it briefly.
What its saying is that the oursong alias is already opened and is being used so if we wanted to open another Mci Device we
need to supply a new alias. Now press the btnClose button. lblError should now read that “The Specified Command Was
Carried Out.” That means that our close command was successful at closing our oursong from memory. Now press the play
button and lblError should read “The Specified Command Was Carried Out.” Press the play button again and lblError should
read that “The specified alias is already being used in this application. Use a unique alias.” If you press that “Close” button
lblError should read that the command was carried through. If you press that “Play” button lblError should again read that the
command was carried through. Blah.. Blah.. Blah.. O.k. enough of that stuff.

Now lets program the Mci Device to play our Mp3, Wave, ect. song. Go to the webpage and select the play command and
look over it. Every device type recognizes the play command string. In the “Play” button between the mciSendString code
and the mciGetErrorString code that we already put their type:

retVal = mciSendString("play oursong", 0, 0, 0)

O.k. Let break this down. The play command tells the Mci Device to start playing the file contained in the ‘oursong’ alias.
Pretty simple. Run the program and press the “Play” button and it should start playing the song you specified in the ‘fileName’
variable. Everything should be going well. If it isn’t check the lblError Text and see what the mciGetErrorString function is
returning. Maybe while you was looking at the documentation on the play command you noticed a from position flag and a to
position flag. What these 2 flags do is allow you to start playing at a certain point in the file and play to a specified point in the
file. If you want to play the complete file then just ignore these 2 flags. But if you want to specify a starting point and a ending
point you would program the Mci Device in this manner. (You can also specify whether to start playing the song from a
specified point to the end of the song, or tell it to start from the beginning but only to a specified point.)

retVal = mciSendString("play oursong from " & 1000 & " to " & 3000, 0, 0, 0)

O.k. Lets break this down. We told the Mci Device to play ‘oursong’ from “1000 milli-seconds” to “3000 milli-seconds”.
Pretty simple right? Now that we have a play command and a close command, what if you just wanted to stop the song at its
current playing position and not completely close the file? Well, thats where the ‘stop’ command comes in. Go back to the
msdn documentation website and click on the ‘stop’ command. Notice that their is only 1 flag available and thats for digital
devices? Their are no other flags we need for this command. Lets write our stop command. In the btnStop button type:

retVal = mciSendString("stop oursong", 0, 0, 0)

O.k. Lets break this down. Well, theres not much to break down. Its pretty self-explanatory. What it will do is tell the Mci
Device to stop playing ‘oursong’. Not really anything more to say.

What if you wanted to add a pause command to our music player? Nothing to it. Just go to our Mci documentation website
and click on the pause command. Pretty much like our stop command it doesn’t have any special flags associated with it. Lets
write our pause command. In the btnPause button type:

retVal = mciSendString("pause oursong", 0, 0, 0)

O.k. Lets break this down. The ‘pause’ command is simply telling the Mci Device to stop playing oursong at the current
playing position. Pretty simple. What if you wanted to resume a song that you paused with the ‘pause’ command? Nothing to
it. Just go to the website and click on the ‘resume’ command and look at the documentation. Just like our ‘pause’ command
their are no special flags associated with the ‘resume’ command. Put another command button on the form and name it
btnResume and set the .Text property to “Resume”. Lets write our code to resume the playing of oursong.

retVal = mciSendString("resume oursong", 0, 0, 0)

O.k. Lets break this down. It is just simply telling our Mci Device to ‘resume‘ playing from where it was paused at when we
used our ‘pause’ command. Nothing to it huh?

O.k. Now you have some basic functionality for your music player. Now you may want to be able to track the current position
that the music is currently playing at. No Problem. Go to our documentation website and click on the ‘status’ command string.
Look around on that page you see a ton of flags available with this command string. If you look at the waveaudio device you
will see a position flag. That is the one we want to use to get the current position of our song. Lets write some code for it. In
the timer control put:

retVal = mciSendString("status oursong position", returnData, 128, 0)

lblPosition.Text = "Position: " & Val(returnData)

O.k. Lets break this down. you should already know what the retVal variable is for. The ‘status’ command is telling the Mci
Device that we want to get the status of oursong. But to use the ‘status’ command we have to specify a flag. So, you will have
to tell the Mci Device what status information to return. We specified the position flag so, it will return the current playing
position of oursong. lblPosition will contain the position value. Noticed that I used Val(returnData) for the lblPosition
.Text? I did it so that lblPosition will only contain the numbers in the ReturnData string and not the remaining spaces in the
buffer. Getting the hang of it now? Lets get our Mci Device to do more.

Did you happen to wonder what time format the position flag was returning to us? Well, lets have the Mci Device tell us what
the answer is. Looking at our documentation webpage you should still be at the ‘status’ command string documentation. Look
under either the digital video or waveaudio device type. You will see that there is a time format flag. That is the flag that we
will use to get the current time format the Mci Device is using. Just draw a command button on the form and name it
btnTimeFormat set the .Text property to “Time Format:”. In the code window of that button type:

retVal = mciSendString("status oursong time format", returnData, 128, 0)

MessageBox.Show(returnData)

O.k. Lets break this down. We are passing the ‘status’ command string to the Mci Device and using the time format flag. This
will tell the Mci Device to give us the current time format. We will get our answer by getting the value of our returnData
variable. If you want you can just open the Mci Device by pressing the “Play” button and then press the “Time Format”
command button. It will throw a Messagebox with the time format that the Mci Device is currently using. It most likely should
say “milliseconds”. Still with me? Easier then you thought huh? What if you wanted the format in seconds? Well, the Mci
Device doesn’t support returning the time format in seconds but you can easily do it yourself. 1000 milliseconds = 1 second.
So, all you would need to do it create a variable to divide our Val(returnData) / 1000. The variable will contain the value in
seconds. What if you wanted to get the length of the song? Well, that is just as easy as getting the position. In the “Play”
command button right above our mciGetErrorString function type:

retVal = mciSendString("status oursong length", returnData, 128, 0)

lblLength.Text = Val(returnData)

O.k. Lets break this down. We are simply telling our Mci Device to tell us the length of oursong. Earlier we asked the Mci
Device to give us the current time format and it returned “milliseconds”. So, that will be the format that our length will be
returned in since we haven’t changed the time format. Can we change the time format? Yeps we sure can. Goto our Mci
document page and click on the ‘set’ command string. Just like our ‘status’ command string the ‘set’ command string has a
few flags available to use. The flag we want to use to change the time format would be none other than the time format flag.
What you will find out though is some files, like mp3′s, the Mci Device only supports the “milliseconds” time format. If we use
the mpegvideo device driver then the only available time formats would be “frames” and “milliseconds. Since we are playing
music files we won’t be able to get a time format in “frames”, only “milliseconds”. If you only wanted to play wave files, for
example, you could use the waveaudio device type and get the time format in “bytes”, “milliseconds”, and “samples”. I don’t
think “milliseconds” is all that bad though. What else would you want to add to your music player?

Do you want to know if the music is currently playing? Would you like to change the position of the file in real time? How
about a volume control? Want all 3? Well, lets get started and first write a simple function that will let our application know if it
is playing or not. Write the code below in the form.

Private Function playingStatus() As Boolean

retVal = mciSendString("status oursong mode", returnData, 128, 0)

If returnData.Substring(0, 7) = "playing" Then

 playingStatus = True

Else

playingStatus = False

End If

End Function

O.k. Lets break this down. We are going to use our playingStatus function to contain “True” or “False” depending on
whether or not the Mci Device is playing. If you check out our documentation website and clicked the status command string.
Then scrolled down you would find a mode flag available. If you read the description of the mode flag it tells you what value’s
it would return. So, now to get the playing status we would just need to get the value that is stored in our ReturnData variable.
But since our ReturnData variable is 128 characters long we only want to get the first 7 characters. If ReturnData contains
“playing”(which is 7 characters long) then our Mci Device is currently playing and will put “True” in our playingStatus
function. Other modes are available too. The device can return “stopped”, “paused”, “not ready”, ect. Right now we are only
interested in checking our Mci Device to see if it is “playing” or not. Thats important for our changing the position code. Lets
write that now. Put a Hscrollbar control on our form and name it posChange. Type this code in the “posChange_Scroll” sub:

If playingStatus() Then

' The Mci Device is playing so play from.

retVal = mciSendString("play oursong from " & (posChange.Value * 1000), 0, 0, 0)

Else

' TheMci Device is not playing so seek to.

retVal = mciSendString("seek song to " & (posChange.Value * 1000), 0, 0, 0)

End If

O.k. Lets break this down. If you go to our documentation webpage and click on the play command string you will see a
available flag named from. That is the command string and flag we will use to keep the file playing but at a position specified by
our posChange.Value. If you go to our documentation website and click on the seek command string you will find a available
flag named to. That is the command string and flag that we will use to move the position and but not start playing. Got that? To
recap what I said above if oursong is already “playing” we will want to continue “playing” oursong but at the point in the file
specified by our posChange control. So we will use the commandstring ‘play’ and use the flag ‘from’ to continue playing
oursong “from” the position specified by our posChange control. Enough about that already. Lets move on. The Hscrollbar
cannot contain a value larger than “32767″*. Since the time format of the Mci Device is in “milliseconds” and the total length
of almost every song would be larger then “32767 milliseconds”* we must convert the “milliseconds” format to a smaller
number. The useful and easy thing to do would be to convert it to “seconds”. So, we will set the .Max property of our
Hscrollbar to equal the total length of the song in “seconds”. To do this. Let go back to the btnPlay button and type this code
below our code that tells the Mci Device to “play”.

'Get the length of the song in milli-seconds.

retVal = mciSendString("status oursong length", returnData, 128, 0)
 'This will convert our “millisecond” value to a value in “seconds”
'Remember that 1000 milliseconds will equal 1 second. 2000 milliseconds = 2 seconds a
posChange.Max = Val(returnData) / 1000

*Note; Update: Visual Basic.NET does NOT seem to have the .Max property of the scrollbars limited to a value of ’32767′
as it was in VB 5.0, 6.0. So, it seems that you no longer need to worry about setting the above code up by converting the milli-
seconds to seconds. It looks like it is now able to contains milliseconds with no overflow.

O.k. This should be fairly simple to understand. We are just telling the Mci Device to return the length of oursong.
posChange.Max property will now contain the length in seconds (or milliseconds, its your choice as to how accurate you want
to be able to change the position). We divided the number returned by our ReturnData variable by 1000 which would equal
“seconds”. Got that? I hope so. Now if you go back and look at the code above to change the position you should understand
it alittle more. I hope this helped you instead of confused you. I’m trying to thoroughly explain it so you will completely
understand. Just as a reminder. If the code is not doing what you expected and you want to find out what is going on use the
mciGetErrorString function. O.k. Enough on this. Lets do one last thing that would be useful for a basic music player. Lets
create a volume control. Put a Vscrollbar control on the form and name it volScroll and set the .Max value to “1000″. “1000″
is the max for the volume. “0″ is the minimum. Then go to our documentation webpage and click on the setaudio command
string. Look over the available flags and you will find a volume to flag. That is the command string and flag we will want to
use. So in the volScroll _Scroll sub put in this code.

retVal = mciSendString("setaudio oursong volume to " & volScroll.Value, 0, 0, 0)

O.k. This should be pretty simple to understand. We are simply telling our Mci Device to set the volume of oursong to the
current value of the volScroll control. Thats it for a music media player with basic features! Check out my examples and
libraries at www.vbcodesource.comwebsite.

Below is the final product…

 Conclusion

I hope this tutorial we went over gave you a nice understanding of how to program the Windows Mci Device. As you can see
there are quite a few commands and flags available to do almost anything you want in a Movie or Music player. You could
“turn of the left audio channel”, “set the volume for the right audio channel”, “you could open and close the cd door”, “change
the speed at which the movie or music plays at” and much more. You should be able to decide what features you want and
program the Mci Device yourself and have it do it for you. Remember to use the mciGetErrorString function as it is very
useful. It tells you if the device understood what you told it to do, if the Device Type that you are using supports that command
string, and much more. Bookmark the msdn webpage I gave you: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712587.aspx –
so you can have it as a good reference to see what command strings and flags are available. Reference –
http://www.vbcodesource.com – Have Fun!

Jason

► Source Code ► Just String ► Command ► C# Code

46 Comments so far
1. MCI command " step " on April 29th, 2008

plz guid me how to use step commande to reverse the video

2. Robbin on May 11th, 2008

heey, awesome tutorial!!! Works fine and fast!!,

i use the mci command for my games and for my old, slow computer. This programm runs must smoother and faster on
slow, old computers. tnx man!! Keep up the good work!!

3. waseem on May 24th, 2008

pleas… i need to help me in thes problem because thes subject is very impotant thank you….waseem

4. waseem on May 24th, 2008

pleas .. can you send a project as example???

5. waseem on May 24th, 2008

pleas .. can you send to me a project as example???

6. Jason on May 24th, 2008

Hi below is a link to the tutorial in .rtf format and a example project included as well for vb.net.

http://www.vbcodesource.info/downloads/mciSendStringTutorialNET.zip

There are also premade music, movie, and cd libraries with examples for vb 6.0 and vb.net on the vbcodesource.com
website.

Jason
 7. WeNG on June 29th, 2008

Hmm… Just like what i need.

Thanx pal!

8. Ken on September 16th, 2008

Thanks very much for this tutorial. It is great. I hope you can do another audio tutorial that expands further on this..

9. Chuck on September 22nd, 2008

This is the most comprehensive description of the winmm.dll <— mci commands that I have found so far. This is
excellent material. should not be difficult for anyone to convert this to vb.net (download) or c#. We need more tutorials
like this. This tutorial is right on the mark!!! Looks like the winmm.dll will be around through Vista and maybe beyond,
so this is relevant material for anyone wanting to play a wav file.

Chuck L.

10. Tejal on October 1st, 2008

Hey good job…its really a good tutorial…

11. vinay on December 18th, 2008

Great compilation !!

I have a question to put forth, Can we play the byte stream stored in a buffer using mcisendstring() ? If yes, how ?

12. Jason on December 21st, 2008

Hi Vinay, unfortunately MCI doesn’t give you low-level access to the audio or video buffer. Thus, I do not know of any
way to access the buffer like your wanting using mci.

However, DirectShow should give you access to the buffers/streams. If your using .net, search for directshow.net which
is a complete library that makes it much easier to use directshow.

I may not completely understand what you want though. So feel free to give more details. Thanks

Jason

13. Jean Monere on January 28th, 2009

Hello

I wish that you make a similar tutorial in c++ language.

Do you know any link or book that include such a tutorial

Your tutorial is not entirely useful to me because i am not familiar with the visual basix language

Monere

14. Ahmad on February 12th, 2009

Thanks very much for this tutorial i am a C# programmer,I was able to understand the tutorial clearly…

Thank you again

 Ahmad

15. Dennis on February 25th, 2009

Thank you very much for this tutorial, I love it and it works.
But one problem: On some MP3′s I got the ErrorMessage: “A problem occured in initializing MCI”. Does anybody
know the reason for that ?

16. Alex on March 1st, 2009

interesting tutorial however it doesnt seem to work for me…

The mciGetErrorString in particular is prolematic: the errorString buffer never seems to be modified by the function and
remains a string of spaces. I wonder if this is because the argument is passed “ByVal” and threore can not be modified
by the function?
any ideas on how to solve this?
Thx!

17. Ozlem on October 18th, 2009

Hi,

Can you please help me How I can play all MP3 files in the directory?

Thanks a lot, very nice tutorial

18. Randy on January 1st, 2010

I am having a problem playing an mp3 file. It does not start playing at the beginning. It starts maybe a 1/4 second in.

retVal = mciSendString(“close all”, 0, 0, 0)

ErrorSuccess = mciGetErrorString(retVal, errorString, 128)

strFilename = Chr(34) & strFilename & Chr(34)

retVal = mciSendString(“open ” & strFilename & ” type mpegvideo alias oursong”, 0, 0, 0)
ErrorSuccess = mciGetErrorString(retVal, errorString, 128)

retVal = mciSendString(“play oursong “, 0, 0, 0)

ErrorSuccess = mciGetErrorString(retVal, errorString, 128)

Any Ideas

19. Jason on January 2nd, 2010

Randy, try removing the space after oursong on the following line of code.

retVal = mciSendString(“play oursong “, 0, 0, 0)

Make it:

retVal = mciSendString(“play oursong”, 0, 0, 0)

That could be a problem. You can also try adding the code below once you open and create your alias…

Like below:

retVal = mciSendString(“seek oursong to start”, 0, 0, 0)

 Then try playing it after you send that seek command. See if any of this fixes your problem.

Jason

20. Babar on February 4th, 2010

Hello Guys,

I have a question. I am implementing the “skype microphone volume” like bar or slider (In skype 4.1 its Menu –> Call –
> Audio Settings)

Is it possible to do it using the MCI?

If the sound from the microphone is loud, the bar value is high and if the sound from microphone is low, the bar value is
low (if you know what i mean).

If not MCI, any other APIs?

21. Jason on February 4th, 2010

Hi Babar, if I understand you correctly you cannot do what you want with the MCI api’s. You will want to use the
WaveIn based API’s. They are alittle harder to use, but gives you much more control.

Below are a couple links to get you started…

http://planetsourcecode.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=57971&lngWId=1

http://planetsourcecode.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=8314&lngWId=1

Give those links a try. The first link would probably have the easiest way since he setup the codes in a .ocx control.
Hope this help.

Jason

22. wilwad on February 20th, 2010

Thank you so much!

I am writing a VB application for creating soundscapes by playing a combination of audio files.

23. Prix on February 25th, 2010

Thanks mate. I’m C# programmer and it was very easy to follow this tutorial.

But, I have the same problem like Dennis…some mp3 songs throw an error and I have no idea where it come from
(error code 277, problem occurred in initializing MCI)

24. Jason on February 25th, 2010

Hi Prix, it sounds like mci is having a hard time determining how to approach the mp3. Different MP3 encoders has their
own little tweaks here and there and could have written some quirky data that mci can’t deal with. But i’m probably
wrong

Anyways, Updating codecs could possibly help. Below is a link to download KLite Codec Pack.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/sendfile/1094057842/2/1267120875.23132fd1b8e2ff31d246ec9fc25bd6a76e620c84/K-
Lite_Codec_Pack_570_Standard.exe
 IF you haven’t already tried it, the file your having problems with, try opening it using the MPEGVideo device and try
again allowing mci to decide which to pick.

retVal = mciSendString(“open ” & fileName & ” type mpegvideo alias oursong”, 0, 0, 0)

‘Try this if the above didn’t work…

retVal = mciSendString(“open ” & fileName & ” alias oursong”, 0, 0, 0)

Hopefully something above helps you. If not lmk. Also make sure your mp3 file is playable in another player like
Windows Media Player.

Jason

25. Jason on February 25th, 2010

Also Prix, if your running Windows XP or older install DirectX 9.0c and see what that does for you. I think that could
fix your problem. ITs worth a try! Below is the download link…

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/1/e/81ed90eb-dd87-4a23-aedc-298a9603b4e4/directx_9c_redist.exe

26. Prix on February 26th, 2010

I am running XP but I think that’s not the problem because I’ve tried the player also on win7 and vista and still doesn’t
work.

The mp3 are playable in other players (like foobar2000, winamp, vlc …and so on), I’ve also tried with and without type
(type mpegvideo) and have installed the code pack (nice code pack btw xD ).

I’ve found this topic:

http://support.ornj.net/topic/mci-error-code-277

I’ll try later to change the mp3 tag to see if something changes.

27. Subramani on March 10th, 2010

The ‘setaudio’ command does not work with .wav files if type is not included or ‘type waveaudio’ is included in the
command string. It works if type is shown as ‘mpegvideo’. Strangely, when opened as ‘type mpegvideo’ the device
type returned using ‘capability device type’ returns ‘ditigalvideo’, but if type is shown in the open command as
‘digitalvideo’ an error is generated. Any reason for this behaviour? (System is a 4 year old Toshiba laptop with
Windows XP)

28. Miguel on March 11th, 2010

Hi guys, Thanks a lot for this incredible tutorial. I have a couple of questions, how could I measure the audio level from
the Line-In of my audio card? I think I could use “status level”, but where do I get the measured value? And how can I
setup to grab only from the Line-In?. Thanks in advance

29. Thanh on May 13th, 2010

thanks so much ^^!

30. Angelle on June 26th, 2010

Hi guys,
I want to implement one function to play audio files via specific device(audio render).
For example, user may have another USB headset and allow the user to specify play one audio file from USB headset
 or PC speaker.
Is it support using MCI?
Thanks.

31. How do i get the default video size on December 20th, 2010

How do i get the default video size, width anh height by using mci?
Thanks for all.

32. Jason on December 20th, 2010

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms713766.aspx

Hi, using the “Where” command can do it for you. It will return the default location and size for the source window. For
example the string buffer will contain something like “1 1 640 480″

You then just extract the data from the string. The paramters are separated by a blank/white space. You can call the
command like below…

retVal = mciSendString(“where mymovie source”, ReturnData, 128, 0)

mymovie is the alias you specified when you opened the device. ReturnData will have the info you wanted. Just extract
the left/top/width/height info from that variable.

33. João Carlos on December 28th, 2010

I’m looking for a source code in VB6 playing all wave files in the selected audio card (device)

34. Germán J. Fernández on August 21st, 2011

Muchas gracias por el tutorial, me ha ayudado a comprender un poco el funcionamiento de la función mciSendString
Saludos.

35. David on August 30th, 2011

Why didn’t you just use the mciPlaySoundA to play your sound file with? Much easier.

I am wanting to record sound instead. I see nothing in your tutorial on that.

I have been trying to do the recording, and it works great on my windows xp box, but on my vista I get error code of
282 parameter is out of range for number of channels, bitspersec.

Any information on that?

36. Jason on August 30th, 2011

Hi David, it is possible to do some basic recording using MCI. I have a class library I made that does it. I unfortunately
only released the compiled version and not the source code version. When I get the chance I will try and edit this
comment or make a new comment with a download link to the source code link.

Jason

37. dado on September 5th, 2011

Hi ! Great tutorial, thanks for share them.

I make my own AV player using quartz.dll before i found this tutorial. I need help with text overlay (subtitle).With
 quartz.dll when you renderer file it`s automaticly load and subtitles if is in the same directory and if have same name as
movie, but i have load subtitle from other directory and is no meter what is name is. I try to use ovtool for overlay it`s
work but i can`t change font size or font type and when i use full screen text is so bad.

Can you help me ?! Any suggestion?

Sorry for my bad english.

Thanks !

38. Joaquim on September 21st, 2011

i have 2 important questions that i can’t find the answer:(:

1 – when you use the “open” command, why the function needs time to open the file?(or there’s another way to open
the file(more faster)?
2 – how can i set the microphone systemvolume?
i’m trying se the microphone system , but without sucess:(

nReturn = mciSendString(“input volume ” & 1000, “”, 0, 0)

thanks for the help

39. Jason on September 21st, 2011

Hi, to the first, when you open the file it has to be examined. It will check the path, bitrate, frequency, header info, buffer
the media, and more. So the bigger the file the longer it will take to examine and buffer the video/music file.

To the second you would need to use different API’s. I can’t remember them off the top of my head though. If I
remember I will post a reply comment and give you the info.

Jason

40. paris escortes on March 29th, 2012

Could it be alright that will put thing about this in my small personal weblog if I post a reference to
http://www.vbforfree.com ?

41. Jason on April 5th, 2012

If your truly honest and legit, then your welcome to use this article on your website. Thanks

Jason

42. gerald on April 10th, 2012

been browsing the net and found this great tutorial – Thanks so much

I cannot make the setaudio to set a volume of a wave to work in a program

I gan get it running using a button ..
Is there any reason ?

have you tried it ?

GG

43. Jason on April 10th, 2012

Hi Gerald, i’m not sure what you mean about the button thing. But does the volume work with mp3 and other files? If so
 then use the MPEG device instead of the waveaudio device to play wave files. See if that makes a difference.

44. Dimi on April 17th, 2012

When one asks for time-format of a song (or music) of a MIDI file, the return value (wait for it) is “song pointer”. Very
informative … So when one asks for the length of a song the values returned are total garbage (unless you know what is
meant by song pointer)

I also would like to point out to those of you who wish to use it for MIDI and other types of audio files that most of the
MCI functions DO NOT actually work for most drivers installed in PCs (for example, Pause, Resume().. etc.) .

45. Tom Bluemoon on September 6th, 2012

Hello,

This article is quite useful in learning how to use mcisendstring with vb.net. Thanks a lot. Since Microsoft doesn’t offer
the 64-bit version of DirectX SDK, this resource is the only one I can use for me.

By the way, does anybody happen to know how to use capture to grab the frame image? It looks like it’s supposed to
be like

Dim path As String=some path

Dim rect As String = “0 0 200 200″
retVal = mciSendString(“stop oursong ” path ” ” rect, 0, 0, 0)

46. Luke on October 23rd, 2013

Thank you. This is great!

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