How to: Play Media using a VideoDrawing

To play an audio or video file, you use a VideoDrawing and a MediaPlayer. There are two ways to load and play media. The first is to use a MediaPlayer and a VideoDrawing by themselves, and the second way is to create your own MediaTimeline to use with the MediaPlayer and VideoDrawing.

NoteNote:

When distributing media with your application, you cannot use a media file as a project resource, like you would an image. In your project file, you must instead set the media type to Content and set CopyToOutputDirectory to PreserveNewest or Always.

Example

The following example uses a VideoDrawing and a MediaPlayer to play a video file once.

//
// Create a VideoDrawing.
//      
MediaPlayer player = new MediaPlayer();

player.Open(new Uri(@"sampleMedia\xbox.wmv", UriKind.Relative));

VideoDrawing aVideoDrawing = new VideoDrawing();

aVideoDrawing.Rect = new Rect(0, 0, 100, 100);

aVideoDrawing.Player = player;

// Play the video once.
player.Play();        

To gain additional timing control over the media, use a MediaTimeline with the MediaPlayer and VideoDrawing objects. The MediaTimeline enables you to specify whether the video should repeat.

The following example uses a MediaTimeline with the MediaPlayer and VideoDrawing objects to play a video repeatedly.

//
// Create a VideoDrawing that repeats.
//

// Create a MediaTimeline.
MediaTimeline mTimeline = 
    new MediaTimeline(new Uri(@"sampleMedia\xbox.wmv", UriKind.Relative)); 

// Set the timeline to repeat.
mTimeline.RepeatBehavior = RepeatBehavior.Forever;

// Create a clock from the MediaTimeline.
MediaClock mClock = mTimeline.CreateClock();

MediaPlayer repeatingVideoDrawingPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
repeatingVideoDrawingPlayer.Clock = mClock;

VideoDrawing repeatingVideoDrawing = new VideoDrawing();
repeatingVideoDrawing.Rect = new Rect(150, 0, 100, 100);
repeatingVideoDrawing.Player = repeatingVideoDrawingPlayer;  

Note that, when you use a MediaTimeline, you use the interactive ClockController returned from the Controller property of the MediaClock to control media playback instead of the interactive methods of MediaPlayer.

See Also

Reference

VideoDrawing

Concepts

Drawing Objects Overview