I need to read the attributes of windows media files, audio and video. I can do it by automating the Media Encoder but we really don't want to force that 10MB full GUI onto the user machines, is there a way to do this directly?

"Directly"? Yeah, you can get the ASF/WM format spec and parse, but Perl or PHP would be the better tool for that.
We made a demo app for you that shows the SDK attribute code ported to VB.Net, it should get you started ...

Hooking the toolbar to the project

There's no helpful wizard for adding controls to the svToolbar but then again that the wizard wasn't all that much help in the real toolbar. To add controls we have to use code and its boilerplate so copy and pasting gets it done fast.

First, select the pnlSource panel, the one nicely docked to the left of the form, and drag an instance of the svToolbar to it. With the svToolbar selected, go to the property sheet and change its name to "tbrSource", set its Dock to Top and its Height to something that will give a 16x16-iconed button a little wiggleroom beyond its borders, I've set my toolbar height to 28.

Add another svToolbar to the right hand "pnlResult", set its Name to "tbrResult", Dock to "Top" and height the same as the first one...

Before we add buttons, we'll need some pictures for Open, Delete/Clear, PageUp, PageDown, ZoomMinus, ZoomPlus, SizeToFit, MouseCrop, MouseSticky and Save