An animation control, represented by the class CAnimateCtrl, is a window that displays a clip in AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) format — the standard Windows video/audio format. An AVI clip is a series of bitmap frames, like a movie.
Since your thread continues executing while the AVI clip is displayed, one common use for an animation control is to indicate system activity during a lengthy operation. For example, the Find dialog box of the Windows 95 Explorer displays a moving magnifying glass as the system searches for a file.
Animation controls can only play simple AVI clips, and they do not support sound. (For a complete list of limitations, see CAnimateCtrl.) Since the capabilities of an animation control are severely limited and subject to change, you should use an alternative such as the MCIWnd control if you need a control to provide multimedia playback and/or recording capabilities. For more information about the MCIWnd control, see the multimedia documentation.