[RESOLVED] Play video (mpg/avi/mp4) in PictureBox

I don't post often but when I have someone always comes through with the answer! This seems like it should be simple but I'm stumped on this one.

I'm trying to play a video file in a PictureBox. I need to be able to supply the routine with the video file name and then play the video and repeat (play and then when it's over start playing again) until it's told to cancel playing. I'm also needing it to stretch / shrink to the size of the picturebox.

I've found lots of little code pieces on here and on the web but have not been able to get any of them to work for me.

Can anyone help me out with a routine that works (maybe using mciSendString)?

Thanks!

You can't play a video in a picturebox control.
Check this thread for playing a video using other components:
https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....-Play-MP4-file

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arnoutdv

You can't play a video in a picturebox control.

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Whoever said that?
In the end a video consists of individual (Picture-) Frames.
You'd have to process all frames of a video, convert them individually to a BMP, display it in the PictureBox.
And now i've not even gone into I-Frames, P-Frames and B-Frames

That said: It's possible, but YOU DON'T WANT to play a video in a PictureBox.
Use a ready made component

I would use the MediaFoundation for this. You simply specify a window handle on which the video should be played.

picturebox is a good surface for a video-player.
you can use media foundation. do a search.
I discussed this with -Franky- u can check my post in directsound & Winmm
where he linked to https://www.activevb.de/cgi-bin/upload/upload.pl
check his uploads and u should find a media foundation example.

Generally a PictureBox is convenient as a container with a HWND and HDC, for hosting rendering frames for something like Media Foundation objects or DirectX rendering.

A ready made component, like in the Windows media subsystem?

OP was on the right track, it's possible with mciSendString. I've modified this example by .NetNinja from VB.NET to work in VB6.

Code:

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    Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal hwndCallback As Long) As Long
    Const WS_CHILD As Long = &H40000000

    Private Sub PlayMedia(ByRef FileName As String, ByVal Window As PictureBox)
        FileName = Chr(34) & FileName & Chr(34)
        Call mciSendString("Open " & FileName & " alias MediaFile parent " & CStr(Window.hWnd) & " style " & CStr(WS_CHILD), vbNullString, 0, 0)
        Call mciSendString("put MediaFile window at 0 0 " & CStr(Window.ScaleWidth) & " " & CStr(Window.ScaleHeight), vbNullString, 0, 0)
        Call mciSendString("Play MediaFile", vbNullString, 0, 0)
    End Sub

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Called like PlayMedia "C:\path\to\video.avi", Picture1

Picture1 should have ScaleMode changed to vbPixels, and I don't know if AutoRedraw = True is always needed but I set it when testing this.

Thank You fafalone!

I had been working with some code that was very close to that but didn't work. Your example works!

I also was able to change the line to:
Call mciSendString("Play MediaFile Repeat", vbNullString, 0, 0)
Which allowed the video to repeat after it has finished playing and then I used:
Call mciSendString("Close MediaFile", vbNullString, 0, 0)
to stop / close the video.

Seems to work fine with a AVI file - might need to install some codecs to get it to work with other files.

Thank you so much! I knew someone on here would have the answer!

Be careful to test this.

A lot of legacy multimedia stuff is available in Windows 11 but is not installed by default any more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fafalone

Generally a PictureBox is convenient as a container with a HWND and HDC, for hosting rendering frames for something like Media Foundation objects or DirectX rendering.

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Do you know of anyway to have any labels / command buttons, controls in general that are placed on the PictureBox to be visible while the video is playing? Even when a form is used as the container for the video all controls are not visible while a video is playing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Be careful to test this.

A lot of legacy multimedia stuff is available in Windows 11 but is not installed by default any more.

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Thanks dilettante! That's a good point - I'll make sure to test on Windows 11 as well. Do you have a suggestion for a better way to achieve this?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kevin2

Do you have a suggestion for a better way to achieve this?

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I can only recommend you take a look at the MediaFoundation. If you only want it from Win10, then the COM interfaces IMFMediaEngine and IMFMediaEngineEx plus two or three other COM interfaces and APIs are enough to build a simple media player. The MediaFoundation also comes with various codecs. A codec would only have to be installed for videos in H265 format and you can get it from the MS Store. Public WebTV and WebRadio streams can also be played using IMFMediaEngine(Ex).

For Media Foundation the MFPCreateMediaPlayer API + IMFPMediaPlayer interface is about as simple as mciSendString. It's pretty ridiculous they marked it deprecated and replaced it with the far more complicated media foundation stuff. Be careful if you need Windows 7 support, some of it requires 8 or 10.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...ed-with-mfplay

MF interfaces are defined in oleexp.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by -Franky-

I can only recommend you take a look at the MediaFoundation. If you only want it from Win10, then the COM interfaces IMFMediaEngine and IMFMediaEngineEx plus two or three other COM interfaces and APIs are enough to build a simple media player. The MediaFoundation also comes with various codecs. A codec would only have to be installed for videos in H265 format and you can get it from the MS Store. Public WebTV and WebRadio streams can also be played using IMFMediaEngine(Ex).

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Thanks Franky - I'll have a look. For the most part this program will be deployed on Windows 10 & 11 machines however there are a few installations that will be on Windows 7.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fafalone

For Media Foundation the MFPCreateMediaPlayer API + IMFPMediaPlayer interface is about as simple as mciSendString. It's pretty ridiculous they marked it deprecated and replaced it with the far more complicated media foundation stuff. Be careful if you need Windows 7 support, some of it requires 8 or 10.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...ed-with-mfplay

MF interfaces are defined in oleexp.

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Thanks - I'll have a look.

From Win7 and higher you can also use other MediaFoundation COM interfaces. These also work on Win10 and higher. I only have a C++ description of how it works: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...ed-media-files

Another way to easily play a video file in a PictureBox would be to embed a XAML MediaPlayerElement control and let it do its magic. It has the major advantage of already including a built-in interface for controlling the video playback, volume and other options thus sparing you a lot of nitty-gritty work.