MP3 Player : part 1

Simple MP3 player

Delphi's MediaPlayer component (TMediaPlayer) lets you add audio and/or video clips to your application. Use this component to play, stop, pause, etc... an audio or video file with almost no coding from your part.

Here's the quickest way for setting up a simple MP3 player:

1. Drop a TMediaPlayer component on your form. You find this component on the System category of Delphi's component palette.
2. Drop a button on your form.
3. Write an OnClick event handler for the button:

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  MediaPlayer1.Close;
  MediaPlayer1.FileName := 'c:\music\test.mp3';
  MediaPlayer1.Open;
end;

When the program is started, all the buttons of the media player are disabled. After clicking Button1, you'll notice that the MediaPlayer's play button is automatically enabled. Now click the play button and notice how it is automatically disabled when the music starts, but the pause- and stop-button become enabled. All without any coding from you :-)

Now, for just playing MP3 files, our player doesn't need so many buttons. In the Object Inspector, you can change the property VisibleButtons and limit the buttons to just these three: btPlay, btPause and btStop. This gives us the following mini MP3 player:

To be continued...