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WMPDVD Protocol

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[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

The WMPDVD protocol enables you to specify media from a DVD using URL syntax. This is the general form of the protocol:

wmpdvd://drive/title/chapter?contentdir=path

The drive segment is the letter of the DVD drive; it does not include the colon typically used with drive specifiers. This segment is always required.

The title segment is the number of the title to play. It is not required unless you want to start playback at a specific title or at a specific chapter of a specific title.

The chapter segment is the number of the chapter to play. It is not required unless you want to start playback at a specific chapter of a specific title.

The contentdir argument is the path to a VIDEO_TS.IFO file, which may be in local storage or on a network share. If you include this segment, then the drive segment is ignored although it is still required. If you also include the title segment or both the title and chapter segments then they are relative to the DVD content specified in the contentdir segment, not the drive segment.

The following example uses the WMPDVD protocol to play the DVD from the beginning, as if it were starting automatically.

player.url = "wmpdvd://F";

The following example uses the WMPDVD protocol to play the DVD from the beginning of the specified title.

player.url = "wmpdvd://F/2";

The following example uses the WMPDVD protocol to play the DVD from the specified chapter.

player.url = "wmpdvd://F/2/4";

The following example uses the WMPDVD protocol to play DVD content from local storage. The path string ends with the folder that contains the VIDEO_TS.IFO file; it does not include the file name. In this example, the value of the drive segment has no effect although it is required, and playback begins in chapter 4 of title 2.

player.url = "wmpdvd://Z/2/4?contentdir="d:\sample1\video_ts";

Assigning a WMPDVD string to the url property requires Windows Media Player 9 Series or later.

Supported Protocols and File Types