media control interface (MCI)

The Media Control Interface(MCI) is a high-quality programming interface developed by IBM and Microsoft for controlling multimedia devices.

The MCI interface works under Windows and OS/2 operating systems and can control peripherals such as image disks, CD drives, and audio controllers. It can be used to accept audio and video files from other video and sound cards.

The MCI interface is extremely easy to program. The commands for storage and playback of the various media files are forwarded with strings.

Besides the mentioned peripherals, the MCI interface supports video overlay techniques, video recorders and sequencers.