About Custom Visualizations

[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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer.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.]

Windows Media Player provides an interface to create custom visualizations. This section provides an overview of the architecture of visualizations, information about how they relate to Windows Media Player, and the technical details you will need to create custom visualizations.

Note that several places in the code, you will see the word Effect. Visualizations are effects.

Custom visualizations are described in greater detail in the following topics.

Topic Description
User Overview Describes visualizations from a user perspective.
Developer Overview Describes visualizations from a developer perspective.
Building a Visualization Describes how to create a visualization project.
Implementing Your Code Describes how to modify the sample code generated by the visualization plug-in wizard.
Installing Visualizations Describes how to install a visualization on a user's computer.
Submitting Your Visualization Distributing your completed visualization on the WMPlugins website is no longer supported.

 

Windows Media Player Custom Visualizations