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What Is DirectShow? DirectShow is a new revolutionary multimedia architecture designed by Microsoft to replace the MCI and Video for Windows multimedia systems. It is designed to increase the scalability of the multimedia system under Windows. DirectShow is a subset of the DirectX Architecture. DirectShow is cross platform between NT and Win95 (Win98). What Is the Gain of Upgrading to DirectShow? In a nutshell, DirectShow is a filter architecture (inter-linked black boxes). A filter is a COM object that performs software manipulation onto a media streams. By plugging different filters in different configurations you can create different applications out of a single set of filters.
For example: You design a piece of code that flips bitmaps upside down. If you embed this code into a DirectShow a filter you could link (or anybody else) this filter inside an AVI, Quicktime or MPEG decoder filter architecture without knowing anything about those formats. The result would be that all the video played would be upside down. DirectShow is a powerful remedy to SDK's which require programming skills to link code together. With DirectShow linking filters is as easy as assembling Lego blocksà The gain is that when you write media manipulation code into a filter format, it is written once and could be applied to thousands of applications! The real gain is increased compatibility and scalability. Do I Need to Upgrade to DirectShow? You don't have to. But if you want to keep up with the flow and write code only once you should seriously think about designing your media manipulation code in the DirectShow filter architecture. Who Should Embrace this Standard? Everybody that rights code to manipulate multimedia:
Where Do I Start? Get the DirectShow SDK from Microsoft or contact us. Where Do I Get Help? Over the last year Cinax has been helping several large corporations, in the digital video industry, for the development of their DirectShow filters. Besides Microsoft, we are your best bet for support on DirectShow. Contact us for more details about our "DirectShow Development Services".
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