== ACTIVEX Control for VLC == The VLC ActiveX Control has been primary designed to work with Internet

Explorer . however it may also work with Visual Basic and/or .NET Please note, that this code does not rely upon Microsoft MFC/ATL code, hence good compatibility is not guaranteed. I. Compiling The ActiveX Control should compile without any glitches as long as you have the latest version of mingw gcc and headers. However, In order to script the ActiveX Contro l on Internet Explorer, a type library is required. This type library is usually generated from an IDL file using Microsoft MIDL com piler. Therefore, for convenience I have checked in the output of the MIDL compiler in the repository so that you will only need the MIDL compiler if you change axvlc.idl. the generated files are as follow: axvlc_idl.c axvlc_idl.h axvlc.tlb To use the MIDL compiler on cygwin, you will need to set some environment variab les before configuring vlc. If you have a copy of 'Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0' install ed, the following settings are correct: export PATH=$PATH:"/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/COMMON/MSDe v98/Bin":"/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/VC98/Bin" export INCLUDE='C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Include' export MIDL="midl" If you are cross-compiling on Linux, you can use 'widl' which is part of the WINE project (http://www.winehq.com). At leat wine-dev-0.9.57 works, the comand line to compile IDL should looks like the following : widl -I/usr/include/wine/windows/ \ -h -H axvlc_idl.h -t -T axvlc.tlb -u -U axvlc_idl.c \ axvlc.idl NOTE: widl breaks compatibility with Visual Basic. If that is important to you t hen use midl. II. Debugging the ActiveX control is compiled with verbose output by default. However you will need to launch Internet Explorer from a Cygwin shell to see the output. Alternatively, the plugin will also use the VLC preferences, hence if you enable the file logging interface through the player and save the preferences, the control will automatically log its verbose output into the designated file. Debugging the ActiveX control DLL with GNU GDB can be difficult. Fortunately, the ActiveX control can also be compiled as an executable rather than a DLL. In ActiveX terms, this is called a local server. The advantage of a local server is that it will never crash its client,

i.e Internet Explorer, if itself is crashing. The build system does not currently allow to create an executable version of the ActiveX control, you will need to manually define the BUILD_LOCALSERVER pre-processor variable and modify the Makefile to exclude the '-shared' option at the linking stage. Once this is done, you just need to launch axvlc.exe to have a working Activex control. Please note, that executable version of the ActiveX control will override any settings required for the DLL version, which will no longer work until you (re)register it as shown in the following section III. Local Install The VLC NSIS installer will install the ActiveX Control without requiring any further manual intervention, but for people who like to live on the edge, here are the steps you need to perform once you have built the ActiveX Control. The ActiveX control DLL file may be copied anywhere on the target machine, but before you can use the control, you will need to register it with Windows by using the REGSVR32 command, as per following example: REGSVR32 C:\WINDOWS\AXVLC.DLL If the control needs to use external VLC plugins (i.e other than built-in ones), make sure that the plugin path is set in the registry as per following example: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VideoLAN\VLC] InstallDir="C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC" The InstallDir must be the parent directory of the 'plugins' directory. WARNING: Both control and plugins must come from the same build source tree. Otherwise, at best, the control will not play any content, at worse it may crash Internet Explorer while attempting to load incompatible plugins. IV. Internet Install The activex control may be installed from a remote through Internet Installer if it is packaged up in a CAB file. The following link explains how to achieve this http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/components/activex/packaging.asp For convenience, I have provided a sample axvlc.INF file, which assumes that the VLC NSIS Installer has been packaged up a CAB file called AXVLC.CAB. The ActiveX Control DLL file can also be distributed by itself if it has been compiled with built-in VLC plugins; check developer information for more information on built-in plugins. V. Controlling the plugin 1) Properties the following public properties can be used to control the plugin from HTML, the property panel of Visual Basic and most ActiveX aware applications. +==========+=========+===================================+===============+ Name: Type: Description: Alias: +==========+=========+===================================+===============+ autoplay boolean play when control is activated autostart +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+

autoloop boolean loop the playlist loop +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+ mrl string initial MRL in playlist src, filename +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+ mute boolean mute audio volume +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+ visible boolean show/hide control viewport showdisplay +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+ volume integer set/get audio volume +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+ toolbar boolean set/get visibility of the toolbar +----------+---------+-----------------------------------+---------------+ the alias column allows to specify an alternative <PARAM name> for the property in internet explorer, which is useful to maintain compatibility with HTML pages already leveraging Windows Media Player 2) Programming APIs the MRL, Autoplay and Autoloop properties are only used to configure the initial state of the ActiveX control,i.e before its activation; they are ignored afterwa rd. Therefore, if some runtime control is required, the following APIs should be use d within your programming environment: Variables: +==========+=========+=========+=======================================+ Name: Type: Access: Description: +==========+=========+=========+=======================================+ Playing boolean RO Returns whether some MRL is playing +----------+---------+---------+---------------------------------------+ Time integer RW Time elapsed in seconds playing current MRL NOTE: live feeds returns 0 +----------+---------+---------+---------------------------------------+ Position real RW Playback position within current MRL in a scale from 0.0 to 1.0 NOTE: live feeds returns 0.0 +----------+---------+---------+---------------------------------------+ Length integer RO Total length in seconds of current MRL NOTE: live feeds returns 0 +----------+---------+---------+---------------------------------------+ Volume integer RW Current volume from 0 to 100 +----------+---------+---------+---------------------------------------+ Visible boolean RW Indicates whether control is visible +----------+---------+---------+---------------------------------------+ Methods: *** current interface (0.8.6+) *** UUID : 9BE31822-FDAD-461B-AD51-BE1D1C159921 defined in axvlc.idl as "coclass VLCPlugin2", "interface IVLCControl2" This interface organize API with several object (like .audio.mute) It is currently documented on videolan wiki (may change) at http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Play_HowTo/Advanced_Use_of_VLC

*** old interface (deprecated) *** UUID : E23FE9C6-778E-49D4-B537-38FCDE4887D8 defined in axvlc.idl as "coclass VLCPlugin", "interface IVLCControl" play() Play current item the playlist pause() Pause current item in the playlist stop() Stop playing current item in playlist shuttle(Seconds as integer) Advance/backtrack playback by specified amount (which is negative for backtracking). This is also called relative seeking. This method does not work for live streams. fullscreen() Switch between normal and full screen video playFaster() Increase play back speed by 2X, 4X, 8X playSlower() Decrease play back speed by 2X, 4X, 8X toggleMute() mute/unmute sound output addTarget(MRL As String, Options as array of strings, Mode as enumeration, Posit ion as integer) Add MRL into the default playlist, you can also specify a list of playlist O ptions to attach to this MRL or Null for no options. mode indicates the action taken by the p laylist on MRL which is one the following: VLCPlayListInsert = 1 (Insert MRL into playlist at Position) VLCPlayListInsertAndGo = 9 (Insert MRL into playlist at Position and p lay it immediately) VLCPlayListReplace = 2 (Replace MRL in playlist at Position) VLCPlayListReplaceAndGo = 10 (Replace MRL in playlist at Position and pl ay it immediately) VLCPlayListAppend = 4 (Append MRL in playlist after Position) VLCPlayListAppendAndGo = 12 (Append MRL in playlist after Position and play it immediately) VLCPlayListCheckInsert = 16 (Verify if MRL is in playlist) Position can take the value of -666 as wildcard for the last element in play list setVariable(Name as string, Value as object); Set a value into a VLC variables getVariable( Name as string) as object Retrieve the value of a VLC variable. Regards, Damien Fouilleul <Damien dot Fouilleul at laposte dot net>