How to Play a Video or Audio File in a Microsoft Access Form Using the Windows Media Player Control

In this Microsoft Access tutorial, I'm going to show you how to play a video or audio file inside your database using the Windows Media Player ActiveX control.
Laci from Zachary, Louisiana (a Platinum Member) asks: I know you can display pictures, but is there any way to play videos inside an Access database? We make demo videos for a lot of our products, and it would be nice and handy if we could list them along with our products and possibly view them there as well.
Silver Members and up get access to an Extended Cut of this video. Members will learn how to create a playlist to select videos from, we'll learn how to resize the player in the form window, we'll learn how to launch the videos in whatever the installed (external) video player is on your system, and we'll see how to use the VLC Media Player ActiveX control which is much better than Windows Media Player.
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QUESTIONS:
Please feel free to post your questions or comments below. Thanks.

[@janvanantwerp6574]

Hi Richard. TkS for this one!. I have used the VLC viewer as it has no 'BUGS!!". Again, Great stuff🖖

[@mohammedalsarraj9963]

Great review

[@599CD]

Thanks

[@user-uy2ud8lb6i]

Thanks for your content, you cover a lot of useful information and techniques on MS Access. One alternative for displaying videos without any ActiveX dependencies is to use the WebBrowser control and use VBA to dynamically add HTML with video tags to load and play the video file from inside an MS Access form.

[@SachinKumar-to5lb]

Sir,please post videos on how to create query, forms and reports and all the types of queries.

[@599CD]

Start here: 599cd.com/ACB1

[@RakeshSharma-cx5uh]

How to build call routing service for a call centre in access which helps provide database with it???

[@599CD]

Very carefully

[@COMMONGAMERChannel]

Sir, I have some questions about "TreeView" in ActiveX controls. Now, I'm using ms access in 2016 version, the menu to insert Treeview control is not an ActiveX control. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you.

[@599CD]

I cover TreeView here: Access Developer 20 599cd.com/ACD20

[@richamiga]

I tried out that bug you mentioned and found a solution to the resizing problem. If you resize the media player do not save the form but instead go to the properties and change in the 'Other' tab
Windowless video from No to Yes or Yes to No. Then save the form. Resizing works here then. MS Access 2019. p.s. Every time you resize you need to repeat this process. Let me know if it works for you too..

[@599CD]

Interesting. I'll try it. Thanks for sharing.

[@jacksonmacd]

I can verify that the technique works... but it's a little more complicated than that! Tried this technique with an MS Access 2019 application that I am building, and it did not work at first. Then I created a new database with a form containing just the WMP and one textbox, and the technique worked exactly as described. "Custom properties > Stretch To Fit" also works. It seems like toggling one of these properties is enough to make WMP save the new size.
Next step is to get it working in my actual application. I believe there is some corruption in the database that prevents this technique from working because WMP exhibits some other strange and inexplicable behaviour. Neither Decompiling the database, nor Compact & Repair will fix the problem. I think the solution will be to rebuild the form from scratch to remove the corruption.
Bottom line is that WMP is difficult to work with.

[@richamiga]

@@jacksonmacd I tried that bug indeed with a new form in a new database. Clearly you need to build your forms first with WMP before building anything else arround it.

[@rabidfollower]

The user didn't ask for embedded video playback inside Access. You may have VBA call an external video player software such as VLC to play videos, which is less of a headache. If I have tons of videos, I may consider uploading them to TH-cam and have Access VBA call the links to the videos when necessary.

[@599CD]

Yeah, she wanted to see how to play the videos internally. I prefer the external method too, which I show in the extended cut using FollowHyperlink. You're a member. Watch it. :)

[@smilejetpacks3]

@@599CD Yet still windows media player can't play a DAT or FAT file contianing music

[@rickl2834]

Where can I get a code to fast forward the playbar 30 sec and rewind 10 sec?

[@idoweitzman8864]

is there a less hard way to do it

[@599CD]

Not that I'm aware of

[@claudemakwala]

Je suis francophone

[@599CD]

Uhm... OK. :)