Inheritance diagram for wx.media.MediaCtrl:
wx.media.MediaCtrl is a class for displaying types of media, such as videos, audio files, natively through native codecs.
wx.media.MediaCtrl uses native backends to render media, for example on Windows there is a ActiveMovie/DirectShow backend, and on Macintosh there is a QuickTime backend.
See also
Depending upon the backend, wx.media.MediaCtrl can render and display pretty much any kind of media that the native system can – such as an image, mpeg video, or mp3 (without license restrictions - since it relies on native system calls that may not technically have mp3 decoding available, for example, it falls outside the realm of licensing restrictions).
For general operation, all you need to do is call Load to load the file you want to render, catch the wx.media.EVT_MEDIA_LOADED event, and then call Play to show the video/audio of the media in that event.
More complex operations are generally more heavily dependant on the capabilities of the backend. For example, QuickTime cannot set the playback rate of certain streaming media - while DirectShow is slightly more flexible in that regard.
When wx.media.MediaCtrl plays a file, it plays until the stop position is reached (currently the end of the file/stream). Right before it hits the end of the stream, it fires off a wx.media.EVT_MEDIA_STOP event to its parent window, at which point the event handler can choose to veto the event, preventing the stream from actually stopping.
Example:
# Connect to the media event
self.Bind(wx.media.EVT_MEDIA_STOP, self.OnMediaStop)
def OnMediaStop(self, event):
if self.userWantsToSeek:
self._mediaCtrl.Seek(self._mediaCtrl.Tell() << 1)
event.Veto()
When wx.media.MediaCtrl stops, either by the wx.media.EVT_MEDIA_STOP not being vetoed, or by manually calling Stop, where it actually stops is not at the beginning, rather, but at the beginning of the stream. That is, when it stops and play is called, playback is gauranteed to start at the beginning of the media. This is because some streams are not seekable, and when stop is called on them they return to the beginning, thus wx.media.MediaCtrl tries to keep consistant for all types of media.
Note
Note that when changing the state of the media through Play and other methods, the media may not actually be in the wx.media.MEDIASTATE_PLAYING, for example. If you are relying on the media being in certain state catch the event relevant to the state. See wx.media.MediaEvent for the kinds of events that you can catch.
By default, wx.media.MediaCtrl will scale the size of the video to the requested amount passed to either it’s constructor or Create. After calling Load or performing an equivalent operation, you can subsequently obtain the “real” size of the video (if there is any) by calling GetBestSize().
Note that the actual result on the display will be slightly different when ShowPlayerControls is activated and the actual video size will be less then specified due to the extra controls provided by the native toolkit. In addition, the backend may modify GetBestSize to include the size of the extra controls - so if you want the real size of the video just disable ShowPlayerControls.
The idea with setting GetBestSize to the size of the video is that GetBestSize is a wx.Window-derived function that is called when sizers on a window recalculate. What this means is that if you use sizers by default the video will show in it’s original size without any extra assistance needed from the user.
Normally, when you use wx.media.MediaCtrl it is just a window for the video to play in. However, some toolkits have their own media player interface. For example, QuickTime generally has a bar below the video with a slider. A special feature available to wx.media.MediaCtrl, you can use the toolkit’s interface instead of making your own by using the ShowPlayerControls function.
There are several options for the flags parameter, with the two general flags being wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_NONE which turns off the native interface, and wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_DEFAULT which lets wx.media.MediaCtrl decide what native controls on the interface.
Be sure to review the caveats outlined in Video Size before doing so.
Generally, you should almost certainly leave this part up to wx.media.MediaCtrl – but if you need a certain backend for a particular reason, such as QuickTime for playing .mov files, all you need to do to choose a specific backend is to pass the name of the backend class to __init__.
The following are valid backend identifiers:
| Backend Identifier | Description |
|---|---|
| wx.media.MEDIABACKEND_DIRECTSHOW | Use ActiveMovie/DirectShow. Uses the native ActiveMovie (I.E. DirectShow) control. Default backend on Windows and supported by nearly all Windows versions, even some Windows CE versions. May display a windows media player logo while inactive. |
| wx.media.MEDIABACKEND_QUICKTIME | Use QuickTime. Mac Only. Warning: May not work correctly embedded in a wx.Notebook. |
| wx.media.MEDIABACKEND_GSTREAMER | Use GStreamer. Unix Only. Requires GStreamer 0.8 along with at the very least the xvimagesink, xoverlay, and gst-play modules of gstreamer to function. You need the correct modules to play the relavant files, for example the mad module to play mp3s, etc. |
| wx.media.MEDIABACKEND_WMP10 | Uses Windows Media Player 10 (Windows only) – works on mobile machines with Windows Media Player 10 and desktop machines with either Windows Media Player 9 or 10 |
Note
Note that other backends such as wx.media.MEDIABACKEND_MCI can now be found at wxCode.
Creating a backend for wx.media.MediaCtrl is a rather simple process. Simply derive from wxMediaBackendCommonBase and implement the methods you want. The methods in wxMediaBackend correspond to those in wx.media.MediaCtrl except for CreateControl which does the actual creation of the control, in cases where a custom control is not needed you may simply call wx.Control.Create.
You need to make sure to use the DECLARE_CLASS and IMPLEMENT_CLASS macros.
The only real tricky part is that you need to make sure the file in compiled in, which if there are just backends in there will not happen and you may need to use a force link hack (see http://www.wxwidgets.org/wiki/index.php/RTTI).
Constructor.
Parameters:
Returns:
Creates this control. Returns False if it can’t load the movie located at fileName or it cannot load one of its native backends.
If you specify a file to open via fileName and you don’t specify a backend to use, wx.media.MediaCtrl tries each of its backends until one that can render the path referred to by fileName can be found.
Parameters:
Returns:
bool
Obtains the best size relative to the original/natural size of the video, if there is any.
Returns:
See also
Obtains the playback rate, or speed of the media. 1.0 represents normal speed, while 2.0 represents twice the normal speed of the media, for example.
Not supported on the GStreamer (Unix) backend.
Returns 0 on failure.
Returns:
double
Obtains the state the playback of the media is in:
| Media State | Description |
|---|---|
| wx.media.MEDIASTATE_STOPPED | The movie has stopped. |
| wx.media.MEDIASTATE_PAUSED | The movie is paused. |
| wx.media.MEDIASTATE_PLAYING | The movie is currently playing. |
Returns:
int
Gets the volume of the media from a 0.0 to 1.0 range.
Returns:
double
Note
Note that due to rounding and other errors this may not be the exact value sent to SetVolume.
Obtains the length - the total amount of time the movie has in milliseconds.
Returns:
int
Loads the location that fileName refers to.
Not implemented on most backends so it should be called with caution. Returns False if loading fails.
Parameters:
Returns:
bool
Loads the location that uri refers to with the proxy proxy.
Same as Load. Kept for wxPython compatibility.
Parameters:
Returns:
bool
Pauses playback of the movie.
Returns:
bool
Resumes playback of the movie.
Returns:
bool
Seeks to a position within the movie.
Parameters:
Returns:
int
Sets the playback rate, or speed of the media, to that referred by dRate. 1.0 represents normal speed, while 2.0 represents twice the normal speed of the media, for example.
Not supported on the GStreamer (Unix) backend.
Returns True if successful.
Parameters:
Returns:
bool
Sets the volume of the media from a 0.0 to 1.0 range to that referred by dVolume. 1.0 represents full volume, while 0.5 represents half (50 percent) volume, for example.
Returns True if successful.
Parameters:
Returns:
bool
Note
Note that this may not be exact due to conversion and rounding errors, although setting the volume to full or none is always exact.
A special feature to wx.media.MediaCtrl.
Applications using native toolkits such as QuickTime usually have a scrollbar, play button, and more provided to them by the toolkit. By default wx.media.MediaCtrl does not do this. However, on the directshow and quicktime backends you can show or hide the native controls provided by the underlying toolkit at will using ShowPlayerControls. Simply calling the function with default parameters tells wx.media.MediaCtrl to use the default controls provided by the toolkit.
This method takes an input flag as follows:
| Player Flags | Description |
|---|---|
| wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_NONE | No controls. return wx.media.MediaCtrl to it’s default state. |
| wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_STEP | Step controls like fastfoward, step one frame etc... |
| wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_VOLUME | Volume controls like the speaker icon, volume slider, etc... |
| wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_DEFAULT | Default controls for the toolkit. Currently a typedef for wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_STEP and wx.media.MEDIACTRLPLAYERCONTROLS_VOLUME. |
For more see Player Controls.
Currently only implemented on the QuickTime and DirectShow backends.
Returns True on success.
Parameters:
Returns:
bool
Obtains the current position in time within the movie in milliseconds.
Returns:
int
