Windows Media Player: How to start playing a video at a particular time offset?

Question

I'm using Windows Media Player 12 (bundled with Windows 7 RC). I'd like to start it and play a portion of a WMV file at a particular time offset - say 3 minutes into the movie.

This is for demonstration purposes - I'd like to play a segment of the movie, but don't really want to fluff around with the media player controls while I'm in front of my audience.

Is this possible? Are there command line parameters?

Similarly, but less important, can I automatically stop playback after X minutes.

If all else fails, I guess I'll just edit the movie and playback a segment of it :-)

Answer 1

You can use an ASX file. Save the following content to "myfile.asx", adjusting the start time, duration and file name according to your needs. Then, open the ASX file in WMP:

  <Asx Version = "3.0"> 
  <Entry> 
     <StartTime value = "00:25:00.000" />
     <Duration value = "00:15:00.000" />
     <Ref href = "sample.avi" />
  </Entry>
  </Asx>

I don't have Windows 7 here to test it, but it works fine in XP and Vista.

Answer 2

I usually go for the queue-up-then-minimize approach, but out of the box I don't believe there's any other way to do it.

Answer 3

You can do some things with the command line But, nothing to do with timing.

There is an SDK and an API, so I'm sure you could write something, but that would possibly be more trouble than it's worth.