About Folder Monitoring
[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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer.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.]
Windows Media Player can monitor folders that contain digital media files and update the library when files are added or removed. This folder monitoring functionality is provided by the IWMPFolderMonitorServices interface.
To use the folder monitoring services, you must create the Player object in a remote state. For more information about remoting, see Remoting the Windows Media Player Control. After you have created a remoted instance of the player, obtain a pointer to the IWMPFolderMonitorServices interface by calling QueryInterface on the IWMPPlayer interface.
Windows Media Player keeps a list of folders that are being monitored. To get a list of monitored folders, use the IWMPFolderMonitorServices::get_count and IWMPFolderMonitorServices::item methods. To add folders to the list or remove them from the list, use the IWMPFolderMonitorServices::add and remove methods, respectively.
Starting a Scan
Monitoring of folders is normally a background process that does not need to be called explicitly. If you want to actively scan a folder, call IWMPFolderMonitorServices::startScan. You can stop a scan in progress with the IWMPFolderMonitorServices::stopScan method.
Retrieving the Folder Monitoring Status
IWMPFolderMonitorServices provides functionality for retrieving the status of the folder monitoring process.
Folder scanning is done in two passes. In the first pass, the Player scans the folders named in the monitored folders list one by one and builds a list of files to be added to the library. In the second pass, it goes through the list of files and adds the files to the library, and also removes any media items from the library whose corresponding physical files have been deleted from the file system.
The FolderScanStateChange event is used to notify your program whenever the Player switches to a new state. You can also retrieve the current state by calling get_scanState. When the first pass starts, the current state value is wmpfssScanning. During the second pass, the state switches to wmpfssUpdating. After the process is finished, the state changes to wmpfssStopped.
While the Player is scanning the monitored folders on the first pass, call get_scannedFilesCount to check how many files have been scanned. The get_currentFolder method will tell you which folder is currently being scanned.
After the second pass starts, call get_addedFilesCount to check how many files have been added to the library. The get_updateProgress method will tell you the progress of the second pass, as a percentage from 0 to 100.
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