
PlayMM  Version 1.2 
-------------------

This Mutimedia Player is derived from the program "td_222", obtained from the "Test Department" 
site at www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/8444/index.htm. I found the code most interesting, but its 
structure was confusing and difficult to understand. I consequently restructured the program and made 
some small improvements to the player, so that it's now a little more intelligible to fellow 
programmers. The basic concept of the program remains however that of the original author. 

On launching this program a you initially see few controls. There is the System control, embelished 
with the PlayMM icon, some text which says "No Device", as none is preselected and the minimum, 
maximum and close controls. The main control is however hidden within the system icon at the top 
left hand corner of the window. Clicking this produces a drop down menu with the usual system 
actions and allows you to select the type of media which is to be played back. Selecting a valid 
media results in a play-bar being added at the bottom of the window and you may then click 
on the "Start" control to play back your selection. 

Most audio formats are accomodated and this is really a feature of the supporting MCI -
"Media Control Interface" which we are using to play back a wide range of files. i.e the clever
programming has already been done for us and we are really only interfacing to these existing MCI
functions to produce a small but very useful multimedia player. (compare its size against 
Microsofts "Windows Media Player" - its both much smaller and loads far quicker !)

With it you should be able to playback most soundfiles, *.wav, *.mid, *.mp3 etc and
again with video playback the common formats such as *.avi and *.mov are also accepted and displayed
together with any associated audio streams.

Selecting a file from the "File" menu will create a preview window in the right hand side of
the resized window and if it has video playback capabilities, then a video window is also created. 
The multimedia file can then be previewed by clicking on the conventional "Play" icon; note that this icon 
changes to a "stop" control when play has started. With both audio-visual and audio files the progress of 
the playback is displayed by the trackbar. Moreover, you can use the trackbar thumb control to reposition 
to any desired location in the file. (This comes completely automatically from using the
very useful "GetOpenFileNamePreview" api function.) 

Other forms of media such as CD, videodisc, and VCR are also provided for by MCI. CD players are
of course standard but I have yet to meet anyone who has a videodisc or VCR peripheral.
Please let me know if you have one of these devices and find that it works.
 
For full documentation refer to the built in help file which was was created using Ewayne Wagners 
WordEdit editor version 2, which in itself is a powerful editor, and also has a very useful Help Generator. 

I hope you enjoy using this program.

 
*** For more information on MCI command usage refer to the Microsoft /Platform SDK/Graphics
and Multimedia Services/Multimedia Reference/Multimedia Commmand Strings ***
   
Files include:-

PlayMM.exe	The CD utilty
PlayMM.asm	Source
PlayMM.hlp	Help
PlayCD.rtf	Rich text font help data
PlayMM.rc	Resource file
macros.txt
Makefile

Some audio files are inluded, but not avi, mov or MPEG as these are normally large.
 
Ron Thomas.

Ron_Thom@Compuserve.com

www.rbthomas.freeserve.co.uk

20/9/2000

 
             

