Hi Tedd,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. And thanks for posting the updates on this issue.

When you work with Windows Media Player (WMP) ActiveX component (ProgID is WMPlayer.OCX) we should bear in mind the following:

1) this component does not support multi threading properly: even though it's possible to create this component in one thread and call some property getters from another thread, it's not possible, for example, to create a player in one thread and call its play() method from another thread - it simply will not start the playback. Therefore only one thread should be used;

2) this component requires message loop in order to work properly. By "message loop" here I mean a thread which processes Windows events in standard GetMessage/TranslateMessage manner. And since this is a visual ActiveX component such message processing is required even though a component is invisible. For this purpose you can use OleMessageLoop thread which actually provides such ability;

The following example demonstrates how to overcome both these restrictions:

final String filename = "F:\\WM9SDK\\WMPSDK9\\samples\\media\\jeanne.wma";
OleMessageLoop.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
    public void run() {
        CLSID id = CLSID.createFromProgID("WMPlayer.OCX");
        System.out.println("CLSID= " + id);
        IWMPPlayer4 player = new IWMPPlayer4Impl(id, ClsCtx.INPROC_SERVER);
        player.setURL(new BStr(filename));
 
        IWMPControls theControls = player.getControls();
        theControls.play();
    }
});
System.in.read();

However, if you need to work with "player" object in another Java thread then the following example could be useful:

public class HeadlessMediaPlayer {
    private IWMPPlayer4 player;
    private OleMessageLoop oleMessageLoop;
    private final CLSID id = CLSID.createFromProgID("WMPlayer.OCX");
 
    public HeadlessMediaPlayer() {
        oleMessageLoop = new OleMessageLoop();
        oleMessageLoop.doStart();
        try {
            oleMessageLoop.doInvokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    // create media player in the message loop thread
                    player = new IWMPPlayer4Impl(id, ClsCtx.INPROC_SERVER);
                }
            });
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        // "bind" player object into the message loop
        player = (IWMPPlayer4) oleMessageLoop.bindObject(player);
    }
 
    public void play(String file) {
        player.setURL(new BStr(file));
        player.getControls().play();
    }
 
    public void release() {
        player.setAutoDelete(false);
        player.release();
        oleMessageLoop.doStop();
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        final HeadlessMediaPlayer headlessMediaPlayer = new HeadlessMediaPlayer();
        Thread anotherThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                // now we can call play method from another thread
                headlessMediaPlayer.play("D:\\Media\\Audio\\O-WAB-03_V_128_48_2.wma");
            }
        });
        anotherThread.start();
        System.in.read();
        headlessMediaPlayer.release();
    }
}

Please let me know if you have another questions.

-Serge