Windows Media Player control

[mark2004]

Hi Everyone.

 

I'm trying to do some basic control of the playback of audio files with windows media player.  I'd like to be able to play/pause/jump back 5 seconds etc through scripting but I'm having some trouble.  Here is a basic test script I have been using to just open a file and let it play for 5 seconds and then pause it.  I can start playing the file just fine but I cannot pause it. Any ideas?

 

$oWM=ObjCreate("WMPlayer.OCX.7")

$oWM.OpenPlayer(@MyDocumentsDir & "testMessage.wav")

Sleep(5000)

$oWM.Controls.pause

 

 

[computergroove]

Search the forums ->

[mark2004]

I did search the forums.  I am using the "openplayer" method which causes the media player

application to open and the file begins playing.  What is a mystery to me is why I cannot then use the other methods like "play" and "pause" to further control

the application.  

If I use the methods referenced in many other posts to create an object and then open a media file with the "URL" method then the file begins playing in the

background through an invisible window and I CAN in fact use "play" and "pause" methods.  But I am trying to control a new media player window created with "openplayer" or an existing

instance of the Windows Media Player application that was there before my script begins.  All other forum references seem to be related to embedded WMP objects in another GUI window where this invisible method would work well.  I have tried to use GetObject("","WMPlayer.OCX.7") to attach to an existing

WMP window but this doesn't seem to work.

It would be a good validation of what I want to ultimately accomplish if I could just open and start playing a file in a WMP window with my code and then have it pause 5 seconds later.

Any ideas?

[mark2004]

It is almost as if the window launched by $oWM.openplayer("testmessage.wav") is another entity/object that is no longer controlled by $oWM.  I haven't

had any luck attaching to this new object (if there is in fact a new one).  Just thought I would add this for anyone who is burning some mental calories on

this for me...

[computergroove]

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/media-player-keyboard-shortcuts#1TC=windows-7

[mark2004]

That only works when the Windows Media Player is the active window.  I have already tried ControlSend() but it doesn't work when its not the active

window.  I didn't want to get into the full scope of my project but again:

"It would be a good validation of what I want to ultimately accomplish if I could just open and start playing a file in a WMP window with my code and then have it pause 5 seconds later"

If I can do this all programmatically from within my code then I think I can accomplish my goal.  This is just the simplest test snippet I could think of to demonstrate my

inability to communicate with the object once the player starts playing.