Using Device Contexts
[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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer.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.]
The device context is a standard handle to a device context. You need this for many drawing functions so that Microsoft Windows knows which window to draw in. For example, to draw a rectangle, you need to specify the device context.
HDC hdc;
::Rectangle( hdc, 1, 1, 100, 100 );
The device context is specified by Windows Media Player through the Render function. If your plug-in renders using a window, you'll need to use the device context of that window. Use this device context for any drawing tool that requires a device context.
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