Setting the Time Format

[The feature associated with this page, MCI, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of MCI, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

Use the MCI_SET command message along with the MCI_SET_PARMS structure to set the time format for an open device. Set the dwTimeFormat member to one of the following constants.

Constant	Time format
MCI_FORMAT_BYTES	Bytes (in pulse code modulated [PCM] format files)
MCI_FORMAT_MILLISECONDS	Milliseconds
MCI_FORMAT_MSF	Minute/second/frame
MCI_FORMAT_SAMPLES	Samples
MCI_FORMAT_SMPTE_24	SMPTE, 24 frame
MCI_FORMAT_SMPTE_25	SMPTE, 25 frame
MCI_FORMAT_SMPTE_30	SMPTE, 30 frame
MCI_FORMAT_SMPTE_30DROP	SMPTE, 30 frame drop
MCI_FORMAT_TMSF	Track/minute/second/frame
MCI_SEQ_FORMAT_SONGPTR	MIDI song pointer

 

The following example sets the time format to milliseconds on the device specified by the wDeviceID variable using the mciSendCommand function.

UINT wDeviceID; 
MCI_SET_PARMS mciSetParms; 

// Set time format to milliseconds. 

mciSetParms.dwTimeFormat = MCI_FORMAT_MILLISECONDS; 
if( mciSendCommand(wDeviceID, MCI_SET, MCI_SET_TIME_FORMAT, 
                  (DWORD) &mciSetParms)) 
{
    // Error, unable to set time format. 
    return FALSE; 
}
else 
{
    // Time format set successfully. 
    return TRUE; 
}