DirectShow filters

DirectShow filters provides a set of default multimeda operations in Windows. DirectShow filters support many data formats while providing a high degree of hardware independence. An application can also register and install custom filters on the target system.

The ACM Wrapper, AVI Decompressor and AVI Compressor filters work with the Audio and Video Compression Managers to enable various codecs to be used in a DirectShow filter graph.

All the DirectShow filters supported by the DirectShow Software Development Kit (SDK) are listed here. If a filter appears in GraphEdit but is not documented in this reference section, it means the filter has either been installed by a third party or is used internally by some other Microsoft technology. Such filters are not supported by the DirectShow SDK.

DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft’s earlier Video for Windows technology. Based on the Microsoft Windows Component Object Model (COM) framework, DirectShow provides a common interface for media across various programming languages, and is an extensible, filter-based framework that can render or record media files on demand at the request of the user or developer. The DirectShow development tools and documentation were originally distributed as part of the DirectX SDK. Currently, they are distributed as part of the Windows SDK (formerly known as the Platform SDK).

Microsoft plans to completely replace DirectShow gradually with Media Foundation in future Windows versions. One reason cited by Microsoft is to provide “much more robust support for content protection systems” (see digital rights management). Microsoft’s Becky Weiss also confirms that “you’ll notice that working with the Media Foundation requires you to work at a slightly lower level than working with DirectShow would have. And there are still DirectShow features that aren’t (yet) in Media Foundation”. As described in the Media Foundation article, Windows Vista and Windows 7 applications use Media Foundation instead of DirectShow for several media related tasks.

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