Play/Pause video playing inside Movies & TV

Question

Play/Pause video playing inside Movies & TV

Marcel Lorenz 86

Is it possible to programmatically (C# preferred but C++ also ok) play/pause a video played by Movies & TV and also get other information about the playback, like Title, ...?

I know only two ways and both have a huge problem.

Play/Pause by sending virtual keys (VK_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE 0xB3). But it has the same problem as Method 2.
Set PlaybackState of a GlobalSystemMediaTransportControlsSession using C#.

Both depend on media sessions. Method 1 plays/pauses the current session. Method 2 plays/pauses a specific session. But if I pause and minimize Movies & TV, after about 10 seconds the session is closed and neither Method 1 or 2 works.

So is there a method to check if Movies & TV currently plays something and if so to play/pause the playback?

Session Closes Problem:

Timon Yang-MSFT 9,606 Reputation points

2020-12-21T07:38:28.883+00:00

@Marcel Lorenz
When I used the first method with a button, I found no problems.
Could you please show your code to get some information and display it in the datagridview? We need to reproduce your problem before attempting to solve it.
Marcel Lorenz 86 Reputation points

2020-12-21T10:03:35.38+00:00
The code only shows you exactly when the problem occurs.

To reproduce this problem:

Open any video file with Microsoft Movies & TV

Look at the Media Sessions. By inc/dec the volume as you see in the gif, you can see the current session right next to the volume.

Pause the video playback

Minimize the Window of Movies & TV

Wait for 10-15 seconds

Look at the media sessions again. You will see, that the session was already closed.

The code I wrote is only the see it live closing:

To use the attached code (.txt to .cs):

Create a WinForms App

Add a DataGridView called dataGridView1

Reference: Path\to\your\WinSDK\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\10.0.19041.0\Windows.winmd

Reference: Path\to\your\WinSDK\Windows Kits\10\References\10.0.19041.0\Windows.Foundation.FoundationContract\4.0.0.0\Windows.Foundation.FoundationContract.winmd

50001-form1.txt

Accepted answer

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Timon Yang-MSFT 9,606 Reputation points

2020-12-21T07:38:28.883+00:00

@Marcel Lorenz
When I used the first method with a button, I found no problems.
Could you please show your code to get some information and display it in the datagridview? We need to reproduce your problem before attempting to solve it.
Marcel Lorenz 86 Reputation points

2020-12-21T10:03:35.38+00:00

The code only shows you exactly when the problem occurs.

To reproduce this problem:

Open any video file with Microsoft Movies & TV

Look at the Media Sessions. By inc/dec the volume as you see in the gif, you can see the current session right next to the volume.

Pause the video playback

Minimize the Window of Movies & TV

Wait for 10-15 seconds

Look at the media sessions again. You will see, that the session was already closed.

The code I wrote is only the see it live closing:

To use the attached code (.txt to .cs):

Create a WinForms App

Add a DataGridView called dataGridView1

Reference: Path\to\your\WinSDK\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\10.0.19041.0\Windows.winmd

Reference: Path\to\your\WinSDK\Windows Kits\10\References\10.0.19041.0\Windows.Foundation.FoundationContract\4.0.0.0\Windows.Foundation.FoundationContract.winmd

50001-form1.txt

Answer 1

Timon Yang-MSFT 9,606

I found the cause of this problem. The system thought that you would not use Movies & TV for the time being, and thus suspended it. You can see its status in Task Manager.

Movies & TV is an UWP application, in order to do so to save system resources, such as energy and CPU usage, UWP applications have been coded to allow the system to suspend this application.

Although we know the reason, I am afraid that we cannot use programming methods to prevent it from falling into a suspended state. After all, we cannot modify the code of Movies & TV.

If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
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Marcel Lorenz 86 Reputation points

2020-12-22T10:15:48.95+00:00
Okay, thank you very much for your answer. Is there any possibility to remove the suspended state?

What I tried and didn't work:

ShowWindow + SetForegroundWindow (When I maximize the window through the taskbar, it's obviously not suspended anymore)

ResumeThread. I used OpenThread to get the handle of the ProcessThread

Okay found it: https://stackoverflow.com/a/53805164/8304361
Using the packageFamilyName: Microsoft.ZuneVideo_8wekyb3d8bbwe

Answer 2

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Play/Pause video playing inside Movies & TV

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