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Getting Started with the Plug-in Wizard

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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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer.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.]

To set up your development environment for creating Windows Media Player plug-ins, you must install the following items:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 or later
  • Windows Media Player 9 Series or later
  • Windows SDK, which includes the Windows Media Player SDK
  • Windows Media Player Plug-in Wizard

Installing the Wizard

Perform the following steps to install the Windows Media Player Plug-in Wizard.

  1. Locate the folder where you installed the Windows SDK. Expand the folder to view its subfolders, and navigate to Samples\Multimedia\WMP\wizards\wmpwiz.

  2. Locate the following three files:

    • wmpwiz.vsz
    • wmpwiz.vsdir
    • wmpwiz.ico

  3. Using a text editor, such as Notepad, edit the wmpwiz.vsz file.

    Locate the following line:

    Wizard=VsWizard.<VsWizardEngine version goes here>

    Change <VsWizardEngine version goes here> to one of the following values, depending on which version of Visual Studio you have installed.

    Value Visual Studio version
    VsWizardEngine.7.1 Visual Studio .NET 2003
    VsWizardEngine.8.0 Visual Studio 2005
    VsWizardEngine.9.0 Visual Studio 2008

     

    Locate the following line:

    Param="ABSOLUTE_PATH = <path to wmpwiz directory goes here>"

    Change <path to wmpwiz directory goes here> to the path where the wizard files are located.

    For example, suppose you have Visual Studio 2008, and your wizard files are here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0\Samples\Multimedia\WMP\wizards\wmpwiz. Then your wmpwiz.vsz file would look like this:

    VSWIZARD 7.0
Wizard=VsWizard.VsWizardEngine.9.0

Param="WIZARD_NAME = Windows Media Player Plug-in Wizard"
Param="ABSOLUTE_PATH = C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0\Samples\Multimedia\WMP\wizards\wmpwiz"
Param="FALLBACK_LCID = 1033"

  4. Locate the folder where you installed Visual Studio. Expand the folder to view its subfolders, and locate a folder named vcprojects.

  5. Copy the three files listed in step 2 to the vcprojects folder. The wizard is now installed.

Building a Plug-in

Using the Plug-in Wizard with Visual Studio