TheMedia Control Interface —MCI for short — is a high-levelAPI developed byMicrosoft andIBM for controllingmultimediaperipherals connected to aMicrosoft Windows orOS/2 computer, such asCD-ROM players and audio controllers.
MCI makes it very simple to write a program which can play a wide variety of media files and even to record sound by just passing commands asstrings. It uses relations described in Windows registries or in the [MCI] section of the filesystem.ini. One advantage of this API is that MCI commands can be transmitted both from the programming language and from the scripting language (open script, lingo aso). Example of such commands aremciSendCommand ormciSendString.
After a few years[update], the MCI interface has been phased out in favor of theDirectX APIs first released in 1995.[1]
The Media Control Interface consists of 7 parts:
Each of these so-called MCI devices (e.g.CD-ROM or VCD player) can play a certain type of files, e.g.AVIVideo plays.avi files,CDAudio playsCD-DA tracks among others. Other MCI devices have also been made available over time.
To play a type of media, it needs to be initialized correctly using MCI commands. These commands are subdivided into categories:
A full list of MCI commands can be found atMicrosoft's MSDN Library.
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