Media Control Interface

(1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device.

(2) (Microwave Communications Inc.) The long distance telephone company that was largely responsible for competitive telephone services in the U.S. It all started in 1963 in Springfield, IL. Jack Goeken and four others formed a company to increase sales of two-way radios by building microwave towers along Route 66 from St. Louis to Chicago for truckers. Bill McGowan, a New York consultant, joined the company in 1968 and helped Goeken acquire leases to build towers nationwide at a time when AT&T controlled virtually all long distance in the U.S.

In 1969, the FCC granted MCI the right to offer long distance services and to hook up to AT&T's network for access to the customer's premises, yet MCI was thwarted at every turn. In 1974, it filed a suit against AT&T, and the Justice Department filed its own suit, all of which led to the breakup of AT&T in 1984 (see Divestiture).

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, MCI raised $2.6 billion in capital, offered innovative services and ultimately captured one third of the business market. After McGowan died in 1992, MCI lost its soul and was slower to form novel strategies; however, it did develop one of the best IP networks in the country. In 1997, MCI was acquired by WorldCom for $30 billion. Five years later, WorldCom declared bankruptcy, but emerged in 2004 as MCI.

In 2005, MCI was acquired by Verizon Communications, Inc. and became the Verizon business division of the company (www.verizonbusiness.com). See WorldCom and MCI Decision.

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Marine Corps Institute. Correspondence school for Marine Corps leadership and technical training.

The Media Control Interface, MCI in short, is an aging high-level API developed by Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia peripherals connected to a Microsoft Windows or OS/2 computer, such as CD-ROM players and audio controllers.

MCI makes it very simple to write a program which can play a wide variety of media files and even to record sound by just passing commands as strings. It uses relations described in Windows registries or in the [MCI] section of the file SYSTEM.INI. One advantage of this API is that MCI commands can be transmitted both from the programming language and from the scripting language (open script, lingo aso). Example of such commands are mciSendCommand or mciSendString.

For a number of years, the MCI interface has been phased out in favor^{[citation needed]} of the DirectX APIs.

MCI Devices

The Media Control Interface consists of 4 parts:

• AVIVideo
• CDAudio
• Sequencer
• WaveAudio

Each of these so-called MCI devices(eg.CD rom or vcd player) can play a certain type of files e.g. AVIVideo plays avi files, CDAudio plays cd tracks among others. Other MCI devices have also been made available over time.

Playing media through the MCI interface

To play a type of media, it needs to be initialized correctly using MCI commands. These commands are subdivided into categories:

• System Commands
• Required Commands
• Basic Commands
• Extended Commands

A full list of MCI commands can be found at Microsoft's MSDN Library.

External links

• Microsoft MCI Reference - MSDN Library

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