Getting duration for audio or video clip without actually playing the clip

[Warrick Wilson]

Is there ANY way to get data about a clip - wmv, avi, mp3, mp2 ... whatever,
as long as there's a codec for it - without actually PLAYING the file? I'm
using Windows XP Pro and WMP9 SDK for development, and I'm actually using
Delphi, but I can probably figure out the appropriate syntax once I know the
actual incantation to use in some other language.

I'm open to using DirectX calls to do it, if required. Would beat what I'm
doing now...

Thanks...Warrick

[Alessandro Angeli [MVP::DigitalMedia]]

Since WMP uses DirectShow (part of DirectX), that's the best way to do it.

With DirectShow, you can use IGraphBuilder::RenderFile() to create a graph
and then use IMediaSeeking::GetDuration(). See

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/directx9_c/directX/htm/howtoplayafile.asp

on how to render a file (you don't need to actually play it, that is call
IMediaControl::Run()).

Otherwise, you can use the IMediaDet interface (which does the above
internally).

"Warrick Wilson" <warr...@mercuryonline.com> wrote:

--

Alessandro Angeli

MVP::DigitalMedia

a dot angeli at biosys dot net

[bryanw]

"Warrick Wilson" <warr...@mercuryonline.com> wrote in message news:<ON3BUyCx...@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl>...

> Is there ANY way to get data about a clip - wmv, avi, mp3, mp2 ... whatever,
> as long as there's a codec for it - without actually PLAYING the file?

Look in the Windows Media <b>Format</b> SDK. I do this in managed C#
so it's probably a bit different and MSFT provides a C# wrapper class
to the COM IWMHeaderInfo3 class which has functions like
GetAttributeCount and GetAttributeByName plus a bunch of others.

[bryanw]

bryanwi...@yahoo.com (bryanw) wrote in message news:<30b55a51.03121...@posting.google.com>...

After looking at it last night I realized I was mistaken; the APIs to
do this are in the Player SDK and not the Format SDK. Sorry about
that.

Player.newMedia() is the key interface for this purpose. Here is a
code sample:

-----------------------------------------------

Microsoft.MediaPlayer.Interop.IWMPMedia m = Player.newMedia(fileName);

string currentArtist = m.getItemInfo("Author").Trim();
string currentAlbum = m.getItemInfo("Album").Trim();
string currentTitle = m.getItemInfo("Title").Trim();
double duration = m.duration;

Console.WriteLine(fileName);
Console.WriteLine("\tArtist : {0}", currentArtist);
Console.WriteLine("\tAlbum : {0}", currentAlbum);
Console.WriteLine("\tTitle : {0}", currentTitle);
Console.WriteLine("\tDuration: {0}", duration);

m.setItemInfo("Author", "bla");
m.setItemInfo("Album", "de");
m.setItemInfo("Title", "bla");