Finding the duration of a Windows Media File

August 25, 2006 at 9:23 pm · Filed under Visual Basic .NET

So, having spent the last 4-5 hours trying to find out how to extract the duration from a Windows Media File, I finally found a way to do it.

I have been through a lot – even trying to figure out how to convert at QWORD into somthing readable – but without luck.

Finally i stumbled upon a post in the forum on http://www.codeproject.com (excellent site) – which enabled me to create this function:




    ''' <summary>




    ''' Finds the duration of a specified windows media file using




    '''  a Windows Media Player Object




    ''' </summary>




    ''' <param name="MediaFile">MediaFila as reference to the file</param>




    ''' <returns>Double containing the length</returns>




    ''' <remarks></remarks>




    Private Function FindDurationWMF(ByVal MediaFile As String) As Double









        Try









            Dim myWMP As WindowsMediaPlayer = New WindowsMediaPlayer




            Dim str As String = MediaFile




            Dim duration As Double









            myWMP.URL = str




            myWMP.currentMedia.name = str




            duration = myWMP.currentMedia.duration









            myWMP.close()









            Return duration









        Catch ex As Exception









            Throw New Exception(ex.Message, ex.InnerException)









        End Try









    End Function

Remember to add a reference to the Windows Media Player DLL, and to import it at the top of your class.

The project I’m currently working on, is cutting a media-file up into smaller pieces (with shorter duration) using the Basic Edit function of Windows Media Encoder. The actual problem was, that the out-point specified in some situations ware just e.g. 100 miliseconds longer than the actual file, which caused the appliction to break.

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