Neil
Fri Jul 11 14:32:48 PDT 2008
On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 05:45:00 -0700, RLaurette
<RLaurette@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>I wrote a Visual Basic program that uses the WMP ActiveX Control to play back
>a multimedia file. By launching multiple instances of this program, I can
>play back multiple files simultaneously. My current application launches 4
>instances: one playing a MIDI, one a WAV, and two playing videos. All
>multimedia files are local. This combination works fine. I'm thinking of
>expanding this. Is there a restriction on how many files (video or
>otherwise) the WMP ActiveX Control can be used to playback on one system
>simultaneously?
>
>OS = WinXP or Vista
>WMP = latest for each OS
>
>(If this is the wrong forum, can you please direct me to the correct one?)
There aren't any major restrictions I can think of apart from hardware
capacity. However there's a subtlety in this. The first activeX will
be using overlays and acceleration on the graphics card primary
surface
If I remember, graphics card only have one primary surface available
for acceleration (stands to reason) so the other video playback
instances may not be acelerated and performance will suffer.
On the audio side, there may be specific restrictions imposed by users
sound card driver software and hardware which prevent playback and
mixing of multiple sources
There's a newsgroup microsoft.public.windowsmedia.sdk where some more
detailed questions may be answered, an the DirectX groups may also
help (Allesandro Angeli hangs out in both groups and is an expert)
HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2008
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs