Transferring visualizations to Windows Media Player 12

I have two computers. My desktop is a Windows XP Home Edition and my laptop is a Windows 7 Professional edition. I was wondering if it’s possible to somehow get the visualizations from my Windows XP Media Player 9 converted to work on my Windows 7 Media Player 12.

In case it’s just not possible or too much work in the long run I was still curious why the plenoptic visualizations were discontinued by the time Windows Media Player 11 rolled out. Would Microsoft or someone else be able to make these visualizations to be used again?

Welcome to Microsoft Windows community Answers Forum!

Plenoptic was not fully compatible with Media Player v12 and all non-compatible
visualizations were pulled. People who have tried installing this file from
Media player v9 have not had much luck.

You may want to see these links for help :

You can get most of the visualizations from the following website. Visualizations for Windows Media Player : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/visualizations.aspx

Hope this information helped!

Thanks and Regards:

Azeez Nadeem — Microsoft Support.
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/answersfeedback/threads/ and let us know what you think.

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windows media player visualization resolution settings

In windows XP, using wmp 9 or 10, i could set the full screen resolution for the most visualizations, including Battery pack. In Vista, and in wmp 11, the settings are still there, but only the «offscreen buffer size» dialog is working — whatever i set it a full screen size, it does not change when switching to full screen — the resolution remains the same low, max. 512×384 (which looks extremaly pixelized and ugly).

I expect an explanation from Microsoft employee or forum administratorm to either explain me how to i get my visualizations (not mine — the Microsoft OWN visualizations) working as they should, or if this is not possible, admit that Microsoft has made a complete ____ with this part of wmp 11.

Replies (10) 

Hi,
In Media player you dont have the option to change the resolution settings.
However you may try to change the pixel setting and verify if it changes the resolution.
To change the display ratio in Windows Media player follow the steps below:
1. Open Windows Media Player.
2. Press Alt key on the keyboard and click on Tools and click on Options.
3. Click on Devices tab and select Display in the list and click on Properties tab.
4. Change the Pixel aspect ratio you desire to use for the best view on your widescreen.
5. Click on Apply and Ok.

Restart the computer for changes to take effect and try to view the downloaded video to verify if it’s working fine.

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Thank you for your answer.

What im telling is, that there is settings tab for changing resolution for the battery visualization (which is MS very own visualization that comes with wmp 11 and 12) — tools — plug-ins — options — battery — properties — full screen settings. But the point is that they do not work. They seem to be an empty option that does nothing. But if they shouldnt work then why are they there? If that is a bug, then Microsoft should fix it.
The same goes for WMP 12 on Windows 7 as well.

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I remember this really making me angry many years ago. I believe the problem is how the newer versions of WMP handle going to full-screen. The older versions would take complete control of the screen and even change the resolution of the monitor to the specified one in Battery’s settings. Nowadays, the player appears to use an overlay and simply stretches the currently playing visualization to fill the screen. I would love a way around this, as Strawberryaid is my all-time favorite visualization and is absolutely beautiful at higher resolutions.

Bumping for response!

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I saw you questions and frustrations so I wanted to make sure everyone is seeking answers at the correct locations.

First off, the only people here that are actually Microsoft employees are the ones you see with the word MICROSOFT in Blue blocked letters under their names. This is a community of Windows users trying to help each other with basic issues.

So no, there is usually no one from WMP Dev team floating around in here, however, allow me to point you guys to sites that WILL have more specific technical and developmental knowledge of WMP.

The first is the Windows Experts Community. Developers do actually check that forum and reply and help there on complex issues.

Next would be the TechNet IT PRO forums. As the name implies, that is the place professionals go to answer/ask questions.

If you are a developer, the MSDN forum can provide insights to developing applications and tools. But I don’t think that one applies here.

Also, don’t forget you can still get in touch with Actual MS tech support reps:

How to Turn On Visualizations in Windows Media Player

Related

Windows Media Player, the default player that comes preinstalled with Windows operating systems comes with visualizations, a feature that includes patterns such as splashes of color and geometrical shapes that move to the rhythm of a song. For business owners, this feature is a personal preference that enhances music playback. Although Windows Media Player comes with a variety of visualizations grouped by specific themes, you can also download additional visualizations from the Internet.

Click the «Start» button, select «All Programs» and then click «Windows Media Player» to launch the player.

Click the «Switch to Now Playing» button in the lower-right corner and then click «Play» to play a song.

Right-click any open space on the media player, select «Visualizations,» highlight a collection category and then click the visualization to use.

Right-click an open space, select «Visualizations» and then click «Download Visualizations» to install additional visualizations from the Microsoft site. The «Visualizations for Windows Media Player» page launches in your default Web browser.

Scroll down the page, click the «Download» link below the visualization to download and then click «Run» to install it. When the process completes, select the visualization from the visualization menu.

Using the Windows Media Player Control with Microsoft Visual Studio

You can add the Windows Media Player 9 Series or later ActiveX control to a .NET Framework application through the Toolbox in Visual Studio.

Adding the Windows Media Player Control

Before creating a new project, make sure that the latest version of Windows Media Player and the Windows Media Player SDK is installed on your computer.

Start Visual Studio, then create a new project.

In Visual Studio, open the Toolbox.

If Windows Media Player does not appear in the Components portion of the Toolbox, do the following:

Right-click within the Toolbox, and then select Choose Items. This opens the Customize Toolbox dialog box.

On the COM Components tab, select Windows Media Player.

If Windows Media Player does not appear in the list, click Browse, and then open Wmp.dll, which should be in the Windows\System32 folder.

Click OK. The Windows Media Player control will be placed on the current Toolbox tab.

You can now select Windows Media Player in the Toolbox and add it to a form.

Visual Studio gives the Windows Media Player control a default name such as «axWindowsMediaPlayer1». You may want to change the name to something more easily remembered, such as «Player».

Adding the Windows Media Player control from the Toolbox also adds references to two libraries created by Visual Studio, AxWMPLib and WMPLib. You can find them in the Solution Explorer under References.

To make using the objects in the Player namespace easier, you should include the namespace in the using or imports directives of your files, as follows:

The directive ensures that you can refer to Player objects without fully qualifying their names.

The Windows Media Player control is an AxWindowsMediaPlayer object from the AxWMPLib namespace. However, the AxWindowsMediaPlayer class uses data types, interfaces, and other elements from the WMPLib namespace.

Configuring Visibility of the Control

When you first add the Windows Media Player control to a form, it will be visible. If you do not want to use the visible image of the Player in your application, hide the default Player by setting any one of the following properties:

Property	Value
uiMode	«invisible» (See Player.uiMode.)
Visible	«false»
Size.Width	0
Size.Height	0

You can set these properties either in code or in the Properties window when the Windows Media Player control is selected in the form designer.

Object Model Compatibility of the Control

The object model for the Windows Media Player control is basically the same in the .NET Framework as in unmanaged code and script. However, there are differences in how elements are exposed:

• Most objects are exposed under the name of their underlying COM interface. For example, the Playlist object is exposed as IWMPPlaylist.
• Some interfaces have later versions. For example, IWMPMedia was given additional functionality in IWMPMedia2 and IWMPMedia3. If you declare an object as IWMPMedia, you usually have access to the functionality of all versions of the interface. However, IntelliSenseВ® will not recognize the methods or properties of the later-version interfaces, and the Visual Basic .NET editor will not automatically correct capitalization. To get the full benefit of IntelliSense and other features of Visual Studio, declare the object by using the latest version of the interface, such as IWMPMedia3.
• There are no indexed properties (C#) or default properties (Visual Basic .NET). For example, to retrieve a Playlist.item, you must call the IWMPlaylist.get_Item accessor method in C# or retrieve the IWMPlayist.Item property in Visual Basic .NET.
• Because of a naming conflict between the Windows Media Player Controls property and the Controls property exposed by every control, the Player version of this property is called CtlControls in the context of the ActiveX control. (However, this is not the case when you create the Player programmatically rather than as an ActiveX control.)

Use the Object Browser in Visual Studio to locate the correct API names for methods and objects in the AxWMPLib and WMPLib namespaces.

Embedding the Windows Media Player Control in a C# Solution

To use the functionality of Windows Media Player in a C# application, first add the component to a form as described in Using the Windows Media Player Control with Microsoft Visual Studio

The following sections describe how to create an application that plays video and uses custom play and stop buttons.

Add the Video Window

Add the Windows Media Player ActiveX control to a form. Resize the control, and then place it where you want the video window to appear.

Select the Windows Media Player control, then change the uiMode property to «none». This setting hides the UI controls. When the user plays a video, it will appear in the window. For audio-only content, a visualization will appear.

Add Two Buttons and Adjust the Form

Now, add two buttons to the form. Select the first button and change the Text property to «Play». Select the second button and change its Text property to «Stop».

Add the Play Code

Double-click the Play button to reveal the Code window. In C#, the following code will be displayed:

Add this line between the two curly braces:

In the preceding code example, «axWindowsMediaPlayer1» is the default name of the Windows Media Player control, and «c:\mediafile.wmv» is a placeholder for the name of the media item you want to play. Any valid file path can be used. The @ symbol instructs the compiler to not interpret backslashes as escape characters.

If you have added the digital media content from the Windows Media Player SDK to the library in Windows Media Player, you can use this code instead:

Because the autoStart property is true by default, Windows Media Player will start playing when you set the currentPlaylist or URL property.

Add the Stop Code

Double-click the Stop button to reveal the Code window. In C#, the following code will be displayed:

Add this line between the two curly braces:

The managed-code wrapper for the Windows Media Player control exposes the Controls object as Ctlcontrols to avoid collision with the Controls property inherited from System.Windows.Forms.Control.

Add Error-handling

The Windows Media Player control does not raise an exception when it encounters an error such as an invalid URL. Instead, it signals an event. Your application should handle error events sent by the Player.

To create an event handler, first open the Properties window for the Windows Media Player control. In the list of events, double-click MediaError. The following code is displayed:

The following code could be inserted in the method to provide minimal error-handling capability. Note that information about the error can be retrieved from the _WMPOCXEvents_MediaErrorEvent argument.