MCISendString

I am looking for someone whose very knowledge-ible in using MCISendString functions, that could me out of some problems. I have put together a CD Player(VB program), I am trying to emulate Windows CD Player( and yet add a few other things), but am running into a lot of problems, like bad timing displays, late music startings and so forth. Could someone email me, and so I could send what I have put together - so they could look it over and fix my mistakes. I sure could use a different perspective.

Thanks, VBFingers. I am using VB5, and soon hoping to upgrade.

Yup there is a problem with MciSendString for video.

I have a video player too.

On my older PC / build machine the timing is way different than on my Laptop 98 machine.

I want the video to start at 62 seconds in. That works fine for the laptop. On the older PC I need to set the start point to 50 seconds in. WOW that is a 12 second difference.

What are they doing? Generating random numbers for us to use. Somebody at MicroSoft better explain this.

I made a change to my program to allow for an alternate start point. If the program name has alt in it then the adjustment time is used. That works find for both my machines.. Buuuut other hardware could be anywhere in between. How bad is that...

Still using VB5 as well? :)

Yup VB5 Since 1999. It has and still does work for w95 I haven't tested it on Windows 8...

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/st...ast_flyers.htm
This link shows how I Use Slow motion to watch faster than sight objects. They are there..

I made a change so that the start and slow motion points can be altered. See the alt== string in the timeline playback control text file.

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/st..._videosmix.txt

Does MciSendString work better for VB6?

Yes. Also, DirectX

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Originally Posted by SpectateSwamp

Yup VB5 Since 1999. It has and still does work for w95 I haven't tested it on Windows 8...

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Why would anyone still use w95? Where would you even find hardware that it supports? I think it has been at least 10 years since I owned hardware that had w95 drivers maybe longer. Even w98 is almost impossible to get working on any hardware made in the last 10 years and Windows ME doesn't cover much in that time frame.

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Does MciSendString work better for VB6?

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I used Vb5 until 2000 when I switched to Vb6. I can't think of any reason to choose VB5 over VB6, all my old VB5 projects worked just fine in VB6 and VB6 has additional features that were not present in VB5.

As for MciSendString I have no idea, never had a need to use it.

Given that VB5 is now 17 years old and was designed to work with windows 95 as well as being 12 years outdated it may be time to consider something from within the last 10 years or so.

A little more testing to do. Then I'll upgrade.

There are a thousand reasons to use the Greatest program on the planet. Maybe more. Random video then random segments in that video then another.

The App has been running fine all along. The only other problem is that some of the later Windows versions don't allow for me to put the results of a search in the ClipBoard. ie URL or PassWord etc

And anyway the original post is from year 2000 and I doubt that the OP is still interested in an answer. :)
The problem seems to be outdated and the solution comes 12 years too late. ;)

I wanted to say, please don't revive dead old threads.

B.S.

I have come across OLD threads about Desktop Search. The Know-It-Alls and Lord-It-Over-Yous hated it when I responded. They thought; that all that could be said of any value, already has been. I wrote a Search and most of them had NO idea. So of course I called them out on it.

I think you missed the point entirely. The question was asked 12 years ago and is related to a language that has been abandoned by almost everyone for about that same length of time. VB5 was great in the 90s, VB6 is better, no reason to use VB5.

And yes we do not like it when people revive threads that are far out of date as it wastes our time. They come to the top of the list and we look to see if we can help only to find out the person who asked the question no longer needs an answer.

I had the app running under VB6 around 2002. It should be easy to get that working.

Now to find a legal copy of VB6.

If that fixes my MciSendString timing problems, I'd be doing the happy dance.

So this thread wasn't a complete waste of time..

Thanks

Probably smarter to get MODERN. VS2011 Express Editions are FREE, btw

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Originally Posted by dglienna

Probably smarter to get MODERN. VS2011 Express Editions are FREE, btw

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I will Thanks.

@SpectateSwamp

I wonder if the timing issue you see might be due to loading of the file. Is there a delay with very small files, and what about the various formats, such as AVI, MPEG, etc? The control I authored does not have any such issue that I've ever seen, even on "legacy" hardware. How are you keeping track of the time?

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Originally Posted by WizBang

@SpectateSwamp

I wonder if the timing issue you see might be due to loading of the file. Is there a delay with very small files, and what about the various formats, such as AVI, MPEG, etc? The control I authored does not have any such issue that I've ever seen, even on "legacy" hardware. How are you keeping track of the time?

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Hi WizBang
Most of my files are very small. The ones I am having problems with are under 3 minutes. My player is old and at the time only mpeg offered the ability to start and stop anywhere in a video. The app does play avi but not with the same controls as mpeg. I'm sure your player would be far better than MciSendString for timing, it couldn't be worse.
I start the video at a specific point and check to see if it has passed 1/30 of a second in time. If it has I pause for 8/30 of a second. etc. To make it work better I start the video a second or 2 before the point where I want the slow motion, once it reaches that point then it switches to slo-mo. For some reason that just works better. It could be due to interference from other background jobs. Don't know. But the timing is always the same difference. I added the alt==-11000 to the timeline playback control file and if the program name has Alt in it then that field is used to adjust the begin play and the slow motion play points. That works for the 2 computers I have that are wildly different.

The delay is most certainly not inherent to mciSendString, so it must be due to something else. Perhaps the way you're opening/playing the file. Do you set the format to milliseconds, or frames? What is the command string you're using exactly? Also, I'm not sure what you mean about AVI playing, but not with the same controls as MPEG.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WizBang

The delay is most certainly not inherent to mciSendString, so it must be due to something else. Perhaps the way you're opening/playing the file. Do you set the format to milliseconds, or frames? What is the command string you're using exactly? Also, I'm not sure what you mean about AVI playing, but not with the same controls as MPEG.

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http://www.telusplanet.net/public/st..._videosmix.txt

This is the timeline playlist I use to show the Strange artifacts I have been capturing. There is a 13 second difference in the middle of the video and 6 sec difference near the end. SEE the alt==-13000 for the specific differences at various points in the video

There is a 2 year old copy of my source code at:
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/source.txt
I quit posting the latest source when everyone complained about the excessive use of "gotos" (over 600)

It works fine on all the laptops that I've seen. Just the Old PC tower with windows 98.

It was frustrating to tell someone to look here and the actual action took place many seconds away.

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/st...ast_flyers.htm
again this is the sequence that I have set up so those interested can hunt their own FTS objects. And show them off.

With the AVI thing. I added the video playback capabilities around 2002 and at the time the MciSendString or the avi files I was using didn't have the ability to jump to a start point.

Well, scanning through the source code, I saw some of the command strings used for opening the video files did not include the wait command. That may have some impact on the issue you're describing.

I'm also wondering if perhaps the videos might not be encoded as optimally as they could be. What compressor and parameters are you using? Can you attach a short file which exhibits the problem?

http://archive.org/details/demo85-pict7

This is the file that I was trying to display.

The source code is pretty old and a lot of the MciSendString stuff has changed over the years. Some not being used but still left in there.

What does your control do? Video I hope.

OK, I downloaded the MPEG1 file. Looks like some very strange encoding, which I don't readily recognize. Tested on a clean install of windows xp, and wmp couldn't play the file, nor could it identify the codec to download. There was a MCI error. VirtualDub crashed when attempting to open the file.

Tested on a win95 box with tons of codecs installed, and wmp couldn't play the file, nor could it identify the codec to download. There was an MCI error. VirtualDub did open the file successfully, and the only clue I noticed is the audio was encoded at 48K, Layer II. Not a good standard, and from my experience can cause issues, especially for videos.

Try encoding with MPEG4-V2 for video, and mp3 at 128K for audio, no VBR. That should play well on virtually everything.

Yes, my control handles video as well as audio, in many formats. But unless the machine has the proper codec, there will be playback issues.

Wow a win95 box? really? I don't think I own any hardware that would be supported by Win95 or even Win98 for that matter ;)

I sometimes wish I could get Win98 to run due to a game I like that runs very well under Win 95, 98 but crashes often under anything newer :(

I haven't even been able to get either of those to work properly as a virtual machine, mostly sound and video issues.

I've never had any problems with those mpegs. But maybe everybody else did. Thanks for giving it a go. All my more recent video probably won't have those timing problems. I'll test one of them this evening. Could be that it is just the old mp1 videos had the problems...

Timeline playback was very frustrating when it was so varied.

Recently I found that the app will not run on my new windows machine but the old one is just fine.

Most likely that norton or indexers of wifi stuff is crowding it out.

It doesn't return the video file length. So I'll just issue the mcisendstring a second or more time... with a minor wait maybe.
One of the coolest features just added is a like a Vibrating progress bar. Which replays the same segment or close to it many many times.

Example start at 60 seconds in and play for 1/30 second... Then budge ahead to 60.001 and play 1/30 second from there then budge to 60.002 and play for another 1/30 second .......... with a mini pause at the end of each 1/30 clip.

Wow what you'll see when things are slowed down and repeated.
It is the video that you see not any specific video start point.

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/st...mo85_pict7.mpg

at 63.9 or so this thingie makes it move. A Sky Creature selfie. I love 'em

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb8cnBJL7fU

The Budge feature moves the start point ahead by 1/1000 or so second and plays 1/30 second.
Then move back to 1/1000 ahead of the last start point and play another 1/30 second.
Throw slow motion and freeze frame and you are sure to see something.