Art File Formats
[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, 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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer.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 Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]
The following art file formats are recognized by Windows Media Player for skins:
| Format | Extension | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Bitmap | .bmp | Bitmap images are recommended because they offer the most control over the exact image and colors. |
| Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) | .gif | Compressed image format used for webpages. Animated GIFs are supported. |
| Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) | .jpeg, .jpg | Compressed image format used for webpages. |
| Portable Network Graphics (PNG) | .png | Compressed image format used for webpages. |
If you use one of the compressed file formats that defines a color as transparent to a Web browser, do not define a color as transparent in the image file. Use a visible color to represent transparent areas in your image, and then define that color as transparent in the skin definition file. For example, if you create a GIF file with some areas transparent, they will not be transparent in your final image and you will not be able to use the color you set as transparent in your gif file for the transparency color in your skin.
Related topics