Windows Media Player ActiveX Control on i.MX53 running CE 7

[timjaacks]

Hello,

I want to play videos in a browser window on the i.MX53 Quick Start Board running Windows CE. I use the Adeneo Windows CE 7 BSP 1.22. To activate the ActiveX control, I selected SYSGEN_MEDIAAPPS_WMPOCX in my OS design. However, playing videos using the ActiveX control does not work. I tried it in the browser (embedded into an HTML document using <OBJECT ID="Player" CLASSID="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6">), in a .NET application and in a native C++ application. In all three cases, the same error appears as soon as the URL of the video to play is passed to the media player object: REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG (0x80040154). The ActiveX control itself is visible (buttons, status bar, video window).

On our custom i.MX27 board running Windows CE 6 based on the Freescale BSP, playing videos via the ActiveX control works fine.

Has anybody experienced similar problems on the i.MX53? Any clues on how to fix this issue?

Maybe it would already help if anyone knew how to find out which class is not registered. It cannot be the Media Player class itself, because it is visible, though.

Best regards,

Tim

[timjaacks]

Hello again,

isn't there anyone out there who has tried playing a video in the browser on an i.MX53?

In the meantime, I have investigated the topic further. I switched over to the i.MX53 SMD board, using the Freescale BSP 11.05 (WCE700_11.05.03_ER.msi). When I build the OS image "iMX53_SMD_Mobility" out of this BSP, video playback in the browser works on this board. However, the video is played using software rendering, without the VPU.

When I add the Multimedia extensions (WinCE700_MX53_SMD_11.05.03_ER_MM.exe) to the BSP in order to use the VPU, video playback in the browser does not work anymore. I can play videos using the Video Player application, but the ActiveX control fails to play any video (just like on the QSB board).

I looked at the changes the Multimedia extension makes to the PBXML file and found out, that it's the "FSL_VIDEO_RENDER" environment variable which makes the ActiveX control fail. I saw in PLATFORM\iMX53_SMD\SRC\Multimedia\misc\fslmm_mx53.reg, that this variable removes the Windows VMR from the registry:

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Filter\{B87BEB7B-8D29-423f-AE4D-6582C10175AC}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B87BEB7B-8D29-423f-AE4D-6582C10175AC}]

When I remove these two lines, the ActiveX control basically works again, using the VPU. However, the video is displayed in a separate window, with wrong size and position, making it unusable.

Does anybody have an idea how to make this work? Is this a known problem at Freescale?

Best regards,

Tim

[YixingKong]

Tim

We are sorry for getting back to you so late. Are you still stuck with the issue? If you have somehow to resolved the issue, can we close the discussion? If you still need help, please feel free to reply with an update to this discussion.

Thanks,
Yixing

[timjaacks]

Hello Yixing,

thanks for the reply. We have worked around the issue by removing the Multimedia extensions (WinCE700_MX53_SMD_11.05.03_ER_MM.exe) from our BSP, i.e. using video without the VPU. This is completely unsatisfying, because of course we would like to use the VPU, but we could not find a way to use it inside a browser window. So yes, we are still stuck with the issue, and I would appreciate an info from Freescale on this topic.

As I described in my last post, the Multimedia Extensions remove the VMR (VideoMixingRenderer) from the registry. The ActiveX control, however, relies on this component and does not work without it. In CE 6, this component did not exist. Instead, there was the VideoRenderer, for which Freescale provides an own implementation. That is why video playback works under CE 6 using ActiveX. The Video ActiveX control from Microsoft is under closed source and there is no possibility of making it use the old VideoRenderer, so, in my opinion, the only way for making video playback work on CE 7 via ActiveX as well would be a Freescale implementation of the new VideoMixingRenderer.

Best regards,

Tim

[justin_jiang · Accepted solution]

Hi Tim,

I think your analysis is correct. In our WCE7 MX53 BSP we didn't use MSFT VMR, we are keep using the video render from WCE6 due to performance issue.

Freescale didn't test browse video playback, we only test it with local files playback. Freescale have no plan to enable VMR currently.

B.R

Justin

[timjaacks]

Dear Justin,

thank you very much for your confirmation. So, as far as I understand, there is no possibility of playing videos in the browser on iMX53 WCE7 using the VPU, am I right?

Best regards,

Tim

[justin_jiang]

Hi Tim,

Correct.

B.R

Justin

[YixingKong]

Tim

I will branch your request into an internal group and try to ask application engineer to answer your question.

Regards,

Yixing

[karina_valencia]

Deactivated user can you attend this case?