Media Element Formats and Player  
Author Message
neotom





PostPosted: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Media Element Formats and Player Top

My question relates to the video format and media player in WPF. In previous frameworks, while mostly used, Direct3D was used to play videos in specific formats such as AVI or WMV. While this may work in the new framework, it is under my impression that the WPF Media element only works with WMV. Plus, in order to play the media element itself the user must have windows media player installed in order to play (version 10 or 11). When I have used the Media element it only sometimes works while loading wmv files without any other codecs necessary. Is this an issue with WPF in general, or am I have I missed something here

- Thomas




Visual Studio 200833  
 
 
publicENEMY





PostPosted: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Media Element Formats and Player Top

hi.

if your current windows media player can play the media, media element can also play the media(although, msdn stated otherwise). tried it and it works. the only problem is, how you provide the media source. for best result, use uri(i dont know if its possible to use uri in xaml).

hope this helps. good luck.


 
 
Guillaume R.





PostPosted: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Media Element Formats and Player Top

Hi Thomas,
I've played a little bit with the MediaElement control and here's what i know :

  • You need WMP 10 or 11 to make MediaElement work because MediaElement uses WMP code (it seems to be like a "wrapper").
  • If you can play a video in WMP, it will play in a MediaElement. I've tried wmv, divx, xvid and mpg (avi is just a container and can be used by multiple formats). All you need is the right codecs installed.

Guillaume


 
 
SerialSeb





PostPosted: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Media Element Formats and Player Top

Actually it calls back to the MIL which then builds a DirectShow graph, so normally, any file that can be rendered using a graph should be able to be rendered by MediaElement. What would be very useful from microsoft would be a way to let us define our own directshow graph, for things like media centers, webcam etc.

 
 
Gluber2006





PostPosted: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Media Element Formats and Player Top

I actually have many questions in the same regard, non standard video playback via WPF...

DRM support and/or reading a video from a System.IO.Stream basically. See my ( unanswered post ) :
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=1027951&SiteID=1


 
 
neotom





PostPosted: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Media Element Formats and Player Top

I recently found a wiki entry on the technology behind media features of WPF and Vista in general. A lot of the framework is utilized through a series of COM apis focused on content protection, audio and video playback in a platform called the Media Foundation. The problem with Media Foundation however, is that it intends to leave out the availability to previous Windows operating systems including XP. According to the wiki article, Media Foundation is to be developed in steps. Where in the beginning it will integrate DirectShow into the platform. Which makes sense from the previous comment about MIL to DirectShow. MSDN has a nice article on the migration from DirectShow to Media Foundation here.