"Send MCI string command" total commander internal viewer (Windows only documentation)

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3ICE
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"Send MCI string command" total commander internal viewer (Windows only documentation)

Post by *3ICE »

Hi,

Using the internal total commander viewer to play music (hooray for playlist mode), I noticed an option: "Send mci string command". It pops up a simple UI with a command textbox, result label, Send and Close buttons, but I have no idea what kinds of things I can type in the box and there is no help. (Because it's OS specific, apparently.)

What is even an MCI? What kinds of commands can I send? Let's find out together!

Experimentation:
"help" is not a valid command.
"play" and "stop" are. And they work too! (Stop actually behaves closer to what we'd expect from a "pause" command.)


Relevant searches and websites:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Send+MCI+string+command+total+commander
So MCI stands for Multimedia Command Interface.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/multimedia/multimedia-command-strings
Here we have a full list of commands from Microsoft:

Code: Select all

break
capability
capture
close
configure
copy
cue
cut
delete
escape
freeze
index
info
list
load
mark
monitor
open
paste
pause
play
put
quality
realize
record
reserve
restore
resume
save
seek
set
setaudio
settimecode
settuner
setvideo
signal
spin
status
step
stop
sysinfo
undo
unfreeze
update
where
window
Question: Which of these are useful? I checked out a few already:
"sysinfo" was not supported on my device.
"status" returns numbers, true / false values and strings, when supplied with integer parameters 1..9, example "status 5" is "stopped"/"playing"
"window" returns nothing; No error, just an empty string: ""
"play" and "stop" already have a dedicated button in the parent UI, so typing those commands wouldn't count as beneficial.
"step" is the first useful command I found; it skips forward exactly one frame. Handy!
3ICE
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Usher
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Re: "Send MCI string command" total commander internal viewer (Windows only documentation)

Post by *Usher »

You should better read Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Control_Interface
MCI is outdated API. It was replaced with DirectX and it's still supported mostly for compatibility reasons (f.e. MIDI support or IDE/ATA CD drives). Some modern multimedia codecs may be still available using MCI if they are registered system wide with regsvr32, but you cannot expect the same for modern multimedia devices and their drivers.
Andrzej P. Wozniak
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