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Using the Plug-in Wizard with Visual Studio

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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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer.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.]

After you have installed the necessary components, you can quickly create a plug-in that will serve as a starting point. The following steps will guide you.

  1. Start Microsoft Visual Studio.

  2. From the File menu, point to New and then click Project.

  3. In Project Types, select Visual C++ Projects.

  4. In Templates, select Windows Media Player Plug-in Wizard.

  5. Enter a name for your project.

  6. Enter a location for your project. This is the folder to which your project files will be copied.

  7. Click OK to start the wizard.

  8. Select the type of plug-in you want to create.

  9. Complete any remaining dialog boxes in the wizard.

  10. Use the Visual Studio development environment to build your project.

    Note

    In Windows Vista and later, the project will not build successfully unless you run Visual Studio with a full administrator access token. Right-click the Visual Studio name or icon, and click Run as administrator.

     

Before attempting to build the project, be sure to configure your development environment to point to the folders named Include and Lib where you installed the Windows SDK. Your compiler and linker will need access to some of the files in these folders.

If you ran the Visual Studio Registration utility that comes with the Windows SDK, your development environment has probably already been configured to point to the Windows SDK Include and Lib folders. Otherwise, you must manually configure your development environment.

To manually configure Visual Studio, use the following steps.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
  2. Click Projects and Solutions, and then click VC++ Directories.
  3. Under Show directories for, click Include files or Library files.
  4. Add the directories for the required files.

Building a Plug-in