MCI Device Types

Devices with similar properties are grouped together in categories known as device types. All of the devices belonging to a particular type respond to a common set of MCI commands. Each set of commands is contained in a separate MCI command table.

The following table lists device types defined by Microsoft. The table includes both string names and constants. Constants are defined in mmsystem.h.

String Constant
animation MCI_DEVTYPE_ANIMATION
cdaudio MCI_DEVTYPE_CD_AUDIO
dat MCI_DEVTYPE_DAT
digitalvideo MCI_DEVTYPE_DIGITAL_VIDEO
overlay MCI_DEVTYPE_OVERLAY
scanner MCI_DEVTYPE_SCANNER
sequencer MCI_DEVTYPE_SEQUENCER
vcr MCI_DEVTYPE_VCR
videodisc MCI_DEVTYPE_VIDEODISC
waveaudio MCI_DEVTYPE_WAVEFORM_AUDIO

An MCI driver assigns a device to its appropriate type when it receives a DRV_OPEN message. (See Opening an MCI Driver.) This tells winmm.dll which command table to use. The driver uses the MCI_DEVTYPE_OTHER type for devices not belonging to any of the predefined types.

To find which MCI commands a driver must support for a particular device type, see the Win32 SDK. The Win32 SDK lists the command set associated with each device type. (Use the keyword index to search for a device type string, such as "videodisc".)