Links to DirectShow and multimedia information

Categories:

• Microsoft microsoft.com dshow related sites

• Technical sites and books sites and books that explain dshow programming or have dshow related downloads

• Newsgroups and listservs resources for getting help

• Commercial sites third-party dshow filters, tools and components

Microsoft

• Microsoft Windows SDK (web setup recommended, use the latest version compatible with your version of VC, dshow is included)

• Microsoft Platform SDK (pre-cursor to the Windows SDK, dshow was included starting with the April 2005 version, this link will redirect you to the current download location)

• Microsoft DirectX main site (dshow no longer included, see below for archived versions)

• Microsoft DirectX downloads (for archived dshow SDKs, TMH recommends the Summer 2004 Update)

• Mike Wasson's Blog (dshow doc team)

• MSDN DirectX site

• MSDN DirectShow site

• MSDN DirectShow FAQ

• Windows Media SDKs

Technical sites and books

• Geraint Davies' excellent site  Geraint (pronounced "Garrent" with the emphasis on the first syllable as far as this English hare's ears can discern) was one of the original designers and authors of DirectShow.  He is now an independent consultant.  His site has a variety of useful dshow examples, some with source code.

• Chris P.'s dshow and other multimedia code samples.  Chris is the most prolific and helpful poster TMH has seen in the dshow audio groups.

• Alessandro's dshow and WM faq.  Alessandro is one of the most helpful and insightful posters in the dshow and WM areas.

• DirectShow .NET project on SourceForge.  Also features the best forum for asking managed dshow questions.

• LimeGreenSocks A recommended resource for using dshow in .NET based partly on the samples available on codeproject.com.

• The main book TMH recommends for dshow is by Mark Pesce: Programming Microsoft DirectShow for Digital Video and Television.  It is a good introduction.  It doesn't delve deeply into particular topics.  It covers the basics of graph building, filters and capturing.  The television coverage is light.  The accompanying CD has the code from the book, the DX 8.1 SDK and a dshow filter wizard.  TMH was not impressed with the earlier dshow book by Linetsky.  Update:  Both aforementioned books are out of print;  check Amazon's used book and third-party sellers.

• Paul Glagla's useful dshow utility programs that are free for the hobbyist:  DVdate, CaptureFlux, ImageGrab, CassetteDV, Filmerit (filter merit editor), ImagePrinz, GRFShow (shows details of GRF files).

• CodeProject.com (links directly to DirectShow.NET project page but there are other dshow and multimedia pages on The Code Project like this one)

• VideoLAN is a software project, which produces free and open source software for video, released under the GNU General Public License.

• Roman Ryltsov's DirectShow blog. A dshow blog by one of the most helpful posters in the MSDN Vista dshow forum.

• For using dshow in game programming there is a book by two MSFT Digital Media Division employees, Mike Wasson and Peter Turcan: Fundamentals of Audio and Video Programming for Games.  TMH has not read this book.  Update: Now out of print but available by subscription from Microsoft Press here.

• There is an online archive of an article on dshow that appeared in MSDN magazine here.  It is by Mike Wasson and Michael Blome who wrote much of the dshow documentation.

• Sherlock Codec Detective is a free tool from fellow MVP Marc Liron that lists information about the codecs installed on your PC.

• GSpot Codec is a free useful utility for identifying codecs and filters used by multimedia files.

• MatrixMixer is "a DirectShow filter to upmix any stereo source to multiple speakers. Designed mainly for of playback movies with stereo audio track on 5.1 audio systems. Distributed absolutely for free (OpenSource)".

• Media Player Classic is a GPL'd dshow based media player.

• VideoMan C++ Library is an LGPL'd library that helps you develop video based applications. VideoMan supports capturing images from video devices input such as webcams, video files, frame grabbers, IEEE 1394 cameras.

• Red Scorpion's blog contains useful samples and articles on dshow.

Newsgroups and listservs

For a more comprehensive list of multimedia technologies help resources as well as how to write an effective post please click here.

• microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.managed  for all .NET and managed code related dshow questions

• microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.video for video (can include audio) questions

• microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.audio for questions related to dshow audio and DirectSound only

• DirectXAV listserv for dshow related questions [ no longer active and now hosted by lsoft; we are investigating getting access to the archives ]

• DirectShow Vista Forum  MSDN forum for DirectShow on Windows Vista

Commercial sites

GraphEdit Plus an enhanced GraphEdit program with useful new features (site also features a filter that enables VirtualDub filters to be used in a dshow graph)

• MainConcept dshow filters, tools and video decoders/encoders

• Leadtools a variety of dshow filters and multimedia components

• Elecard by Moonlight MPEG-2 player, decoder and encoder along with other multimedia components

• Enze's site dshow filters for capturing and source switching (alternative: Geraint's free Bridge Filter which, in contrast, includes source code)

• Solveig Multimedia AVI trimmer and MPEG-2 requantizer filters

• Montivision dshow components for capture and image processing

• DirectShow Training Modular 1 to 5 day DirectShow training

• FinalBuilder a great automated build tool (not directly dshow related but TMH uses it regularly and thinks it's excellent)

• ViEmu a plug-in for Visual Studio, Outlook and SQL Management Studio that provides Vi/Vim editing (awesome!)

• Microangelo a great icon editor (not dshow related but it's what THM uses as an icon editor)

Copyright © 2010 by The March Hare.  All Rights Reserved.  Last modified: August 07, 2010