how do i detect the current position in vlc video-playback in vb.net?

The lack of up to date documentation makes programming with these VLC plugins a voyage of discovery. I have VLC version '2.0.5 Twoflower' installed and certainly with this one, the useful looking events prefixed with MediaPlayer, e.g. MediaPlayerPositionChanged, never get raised by the AxVLCPlugin2 plugin.

As far as I can tell, polling is required, and to get position/duration information it's the input object that should be queried.

This the interface in C#

namespace AXVLC {
  public interface IVLCInput {
    double fps { get; }
    bool hasVout { get; }
    double Length { get; }
    double Position { get; set; }
    double rate { get; set; }
    int state { get; }
    double Time { get; set; }
  }
}

Time gives the current playback position and Length gives the total duration, both in milliseconds. Position is the current position, scaled 0..1 (1 = 100%).

The state property, which can be conveniently cast to an Enum, has values in the range 0..7, i.e.

Private Enum InputState
 IDLE = 0
 OPENING = 1
 BUFFERING = 2
 PLAYING = 3
 PAUSED = 4
 STOPPING = 5
 ENDED = 6
 ERRORSTATE = 7
End Enum

I set up a timer with an interval of ~150ms which runs continuously whenever the AxVLCPlugin2 object exists. The following code will write status information to a Label control.

Dim vlc As AxAXVLC.AxVLCPlugin2 
Dim infoTimer as System.Windows.Forms.Timer
Dim status as System.Windows.Forms.Label


Private Sub InfoTimer_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
 Dim state As InputState = DirectCast(vlc.input.state, InputState)
 Select Case state
  Case InputState.IDLE, InputState.OPENING, InputState.BUFFERING
   status.Text = state.ToString()
   Exit Select
  Case InputState.PLAYING
   Dim title As String = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(vlc.mediaDescription.title)
   Dim current As TimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(vlc.input.Time)
   Dim total As TimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(vlc.input.Length)
   Dim pos As Double = vlc.input.Position
   status.Text = String.Format("{0} {1} {2}:{3:D2}/{4}:{5:D2} {6:P}", state, title, current.Minutes, current.Seconds, total.Minutes, total.Seconds, pos)
   Exit Select
  Case InputState.PAUSED
   status.Text = String.Format("{0} {1}", state, System.IO.Path.GetFileName(vlc.mediaDescription.title))
   Exit Select
  Case InputState.STOPPING, InputState.ENDED
   status.Text = state.ToString()
   Exit Select
  Case InputState.ERRORSTATE
   status.Text = String.Format("{0} {1}", state, vlc.mediaDescription.title)
   Exit Select
  Case Else
   status.Text = state.ToString()
   Exit Select
 End Select
End Sub

Output while playing would be formatted as
PLAYING filename.ext 1:57/18:50 10.35%
Hope that's of some use. It's all converted from C# so there may be one or two mistakes.

Alan.