Exchanging Disc Information with Windows Media Center
A CD/DVD recording application for Windows Media Center must implement the IDiscWriterApp interface. Windows Media Center uses this interface to retrieve information from the application, including the available drives, the supported recording formats, the currently selected drive, and so on. Windows Media Center also provides disc-related information to the application through this interface.
Currently, the IDiscWriterApp interface is responsible for selecting a writeable CD/DVD from the computer's available drives. In the future, Windows Media Center will display a list of disc drives that are capable of writing data to a CD or DVD, and enables the user to select a drive from the list. Windows Media Center gets the list from the CD/DVD recording application's IDiscWriterApp.AvailableDrives property. After the user selects a drive, Windows Media Center informs the application by setting the IDiscWriterApp.SelectedDrive property. To find out which drive the application is using for the current recording operation, Windows Media Center can retrieve the IDiscWriterApp.InUseDriveLetter property. For Windows Media Center in Windows Vista, these interfaces are unused.
An application indicates the disc recording formats that it supports by setting the IDiscWriterApp.SupportedFormat property to an array of values from the DiscFormats enumeration. Windows Media Center uses the values to offer a list of formats to the user. When the user selects one, Windows Media Center relays the selection to the application by setting the IDiscWriterApp.SelectedFormat property.
An application can support the IDiscWriterApp.Erase method to enable the user to erase files from the recording medium. If the current medium is read/write capable and contains data, the application should set its IDiscWriterApp.IsErasable property to true. Before calling the application's Erase method, Windows Media Center checks the IsErasable property to determine whether the application can perform the erase operation.
If the application supports the fit-to-disc feature, it should set the IDiscWriterApp.SupportsFitToDisc property to true. When this property is true, Windows Media Center offers the user the option of using fit-to-disc. The IDiscWriterApp.FitToDisc property indicates the current status of the fit-to-disc feature.
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