Welcome to the DirectShow SDK
© 1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of use.
This document provides late-breaking or other information that supplements the Microsoft DirectShow documentation.
Known Issues and Troubleshooting
Capture Hardware Tested with this Release
Overview
To get started with the DirectShow SDK, please do the following:
Read Getting Started section of the Microsoft DirectShow SDK documentation.
Read the NEW SINCE DirectShow 5.1 section of this Readme.
Read the license information.
Licensing information is located in the license.doc in the root of the CD, and eula.doc in the x86\redist and alpha\redist directories.DirectShow will fully replace MCI functionality over time, but that functionality is not completely implemented yet. In addition, Visual Basic support for some properties of the ActiveMovie control is not yet complete, which might result in some restricted functionality. A detailed list of the known limitations can be found in Microsoft's on-line Knowledge Base (http://www.microsoft.com/kb), searching the Win32 SDK database for article number Q157060.
The DirectShow team welcomes any feedback regarding bugs or restrictions so that problems can be rectified as soon as possible. Please direct your feedback via e-mail to dxmbeta@microsoft.com.
For the latest on DirectShow, check out Microsoft's on-line Knowledge Base (http://www.microsoft.com/kb). Search the Win32 SDK product for keywords such as ActiveMovie, DirectShow and kbmm.
New Since DirectShow 5.1
The DirectX Media 5.2b run time has improvements in two specific areas - DVD Playback and WDM Capture support.
For DVD playback, the run time provides support for PAL DVD discs as well as improved interactive responsiveness. The run time has also been tested with many new DVD titles that were released in the last two months.
The Overlay Mixer, which is a key rendering component for DVD playback, has been improved in the following areas.
- New interfaces added on each pin of Overlay Mixer.
- IOverlay enables upstream filters to do the rendering themselves, leaving only the window management to the Overlay Mixer.
- IMixerPinConfig2 has methods to set and get brightness, contrast, and other color control features, as if setting the color controls on the overlay surface.
- IVPNotify2 has methods to make the video port the sync master of the VGA, and to determine if the video port is the sync master.
- The IMixerPinConfig methods SetZOrder, GetZOrder, SetBlendingParameter, and GetBlendingParameter, which previously returned E_NOTIMPL, have been enabled now.
- Overlay Mixer now tries to create the overlay surface in AGP memory if allocation in video memory fails.
- Some important scaling bugs, including one that did not allow shrinking of overlay surfaces on certain video cards (like ATI rage pro), have now been fixed.
- Previously, using IBasicVideo to zoom or stretch video did not do the correct thing. That has now been fixed.
The video and audio capture infrastructure has been enhanced to add support for more types of WDM streaming class capture hardware running under Microsoft® Windows® 98 or Windows NT® 5.0. If your application is going to work with this new hardware, you should re-read the capture interface descriptions and re-read the code for our sample capture application, Amcap.exe found in the Capture sample directory.
In addition, a new video control interface has been added, IAMVideoControl, that enables you to flip a picture horizontally and/or vertically, to set up a stream so that it can capture from an external trigger, to simulate an external trigger in software, and to list the current frame rate, maximum frame rate, and available frame rates.
A new filter, Smart Tee, has been added to aid preview on capture filters that only have a capture pin and not a preview pin.
New Since ActiveMovie 1.0
- MIDI file playback support.
- Multimedia stream interfaces. See About the Multimedia Streaming Architecture in the documentation.
- Improved Filter Graph Editor (GraphEdt.exe) SDK tool.
- Integration with the DirectAnimation run time.
- New samples, headers, and libraries for developers to use and modify, including the "AMCap" audio/video capture application (see samples\dshow\capture).
- VFW Capture filter. Wraps Video for Windows capture drivers
- Audio Capture filter. Wraps waveIn sound drivers
- AVI Compressor filter. Uses ICM compressors to compress video.
- AVI Draw filter. Allows access to hardware based ICM video decompressors.
- AVI Mux filter. Multiplexes streams into an AVI stream suitable for a file writer.
- File Writer filter.
- Capture graph building interface (ICaptureGraphBuilder). See AMCap sample (see samples\dshow\capture) and documentation for usage.
- All capture related interfaces are defined in axextend.idl and also documented in the documentation.
- DirectSound audio renderer. Includes 3-D and arbitrary DirectSound processing support.
- Improved ActiveX playback control. Improved scripting and Visual Basic support. ActiveMovie ActiveX playback control now by default supports: MID, RMI and WAV formats. Dynamically maintains the aspect ratio of the video when resizing through the control. To turn off the aspect ratio during a resize, hold down the CTRL key.
Building the Samples
To build the DirectShow SDK samples, you must install Microsoft Visual C++ version 5.0. The header files and libraries from the DirectShow SDK are also required.
To build all the samples, run nmake in the \samples\dshow directory. Debug versions will be built by default. To produce non-debug versions set the 'nodebug' environment variable (that is, set nodebug=1), or type nmake NODEBUG=1.
Known Issues and Troubleshooting
The following is a list of current problems. Some of them have already been fixed; those fixes will appear in upcoming releases.
General
Trouble Shooting
- Installation Problems
- Problem: I am receiving an error copying files when installing the SDK or run time on NT.
- Solution: DirectX Media requires that the user be an administrator for installing. Please modify your installation program to require administrative privileges before installing.
- Problem: I am receiving an error using DirectShow property pages on NT ALPHA.
- Solution: Make sure you have NT ALPHA SP3 installed with the DirectX Media run time.
- Capture
- Problem: I would like to improve my capture performance using DirectShow.
- Solution: Please read the Improving Capture Performance section of your DirectShow documentation.
- Problem: My capture card does not work correctly with the new DirectShow.
- Solution: Please contact your capture card manufacturer for the latest drivers. Many problems you encounter with capture can be solved by simply obtaining the latest drivers.
- DVD
- Problem: I am encountering problems playing DVD on a 640x480 or a very high resolution and/or color depth.
- Solution: Change your screen resolution to 800x600, and/or lower the color depth.
- DV
- Problem: The DV Muxer won't accept an audio stream unless a video stream is already connected.
- Solution: If you just want to write audio data, send black video frames to the Mux as well.
Known Issues
- Capture
- The Broadway card does not capture with the AMCap application.
- Setup
- DirectShow requires SP3 on NT ALPHA only.
- Setup requires the user be logged on as an administrator.
- The DirectX Media run time installation installs a minimum version of DirectX. If your application is going to install DirectX 5.0, make sure that it installs DirectX 5.0 after the DirectX Media run time.
- DVD
- ChapterPlayAutoStop and ChapterPlay calls are only allowed in VTSM, VMGM, or TT Domains.
Contact Information
Development questions, feature requests, and business opportunities for those developing tools or content based on DirectShow should be addressed to: dxmbeta@microsoft.com.
Bugs should be reported to dxmbug@microsoft.com
DirectShow has created public news groups on the Microsoft Public News Server, as a forum for the DirectX media user community. You are encouraged to post questions on the appropriate news group:
- microsoft.public.multimedia.directx.dshow.activemovie — a newsgroup for users of the DirectShow control.
- microsoft.public.multimedia.directx.dshow.programming — a newsgroup for programmers of the DirectShow API.
Capture Hardware Tested with this Release
The following capture hardware has been successfully tested in this release using the DirectShow audio and video capture filters (as appropriate):
- Truevision TARGA 2000 Pro, DTX, and RTX
- miro Computer Products miroVIDEO DC30
- miro Computer Products miroVIDEO DC20 (Win95)
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP
- FAST Electronic AV Master
- Winnov Videum AV
- Connectix Color QuickCam
- Broadway
- ATI All in Wonder
- Intel Smart Video Recorder III