Microsoft DirectShow Formerly ActiveMovie. A cross-platform API for developers of multimedia applications that provides a user-mode connection and Stream architecture to support high-quality digital video, high-fidelity audio, and special effects.
Microsoft DirectX A low-level API that provides user-mode media interfaces for games and other high-performance multimedia applications. DirectX is a thin layer, providing direct access to hardware services. DirectX takes advantage of available hardware accelerators and emulates accelerator services when accelerators are not present.
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface. An industry-standard connection for computer control of musical instruments and devices. A hardware and data standard for communicating between hardware. Most references involve only the data standard, which is a byte stream used for controlling musical instruments and storing the output of such instruments.
minidriver A hardware-specific DLL that uses a Microsoft-provided class driver to accomplish most actions through functions call and provides only device-specific controls. Under WDM, the minidriver uses the class driver’s device object to make system calls.
miniport driver A device-specific kernel-mode driver linked to a Windows NT or WDM port driver, usually implemented as a DLL that provides an interface between the port driver and the system.
motherboard See system board.
MPEG Moving Picture Expert Group. Refers to one of several standard video-compression schemes. A codec for squeezing full-screen, VHS-quality digital video into a small data stream so that it can be played from a CD-ROM drive.
multifunction device A piece of hardware that supports multiple, discrete functions, such as audio, mixer, and music, on a single adapter.
multimedia Refers to the delivery of information that combines different content formats, such as motion video, audio, still image, graphics, animation, text, and so forth.