Windows Media Player video is black if control is created programmatically

Question

I'm trying to programmatically create the Windows Media Player control so I can trap any initialization errors. Before when I simply dropped the control on my form, everything played fine. But now that I'm trying to play things programmatically, the video isn't appearing in the control. I only see black video but I hear the audio. Any ideas? ``` public TrimVideoControl() { InitializeComponent(); // Try creating WMP control // We do this here so we can gracefully catch errors if the control doesn't load try { wmPlayer = new AxWMPLib.AxWindowsMediaPlayer(); ((System.ComponentModel.ISupportInitialize)(wmPlayer)).BeginInit(); //SuspendLayout(); wmPlayer.CreateControl(); wmPlayer.Name = "wmPlayer"; wmPlayer.Ctlenabled = true; System.ComponentModel.ComponentResourceManager resources = new System.ComponentModel.ComponentResourceManager(typeof(TrimVideoControl)); wmPlayer.OcxState = ((System.Windows.Forms.AxHost.State)(resources.GetObject("wmPlayer.OcxState"))); wmPlayer.Location = new Point(…

Accepted Answer

The exact problem with the MediaPalyer runtime creation is the fact that we can't perform any changes of MediaPlayer's state (any settings like url/uimode etc.) before the component have been completely initialized. The VS-designer serialized component's state as an `AxHost.State` object and don't affect any other settings. At runtime you can use the following approach:

```
void AddMediaPlayer(string url) {
    try {
        var wmPlayer = new AxWMPLib.AxWindowsMediaPlayer();

((System.ComponentModel.ISupportInitialize)(wmPlayer)).BeginInit();
        wmPlayer.Name = "wmPlayer";
        wmPlayer.Enabled = true;
        wmPlayer.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill;
        this.Controls.Add(wmPlayer);
        ((System.ComponentModel.ISupportInitialize)(wmPlayer)).EndInit();

// After initialization you can customize the Media Player
        wmPlayer.uiMode = "none";
        wmPlayer.URL = url;
    }
    catch { }
}
```

Windows Media Player video is black if control is created programmatically

Solution

Problem