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My Wish List for Windows “Blue”
17 May 13 05:48 PM | pavely | with no comments

Many rumors are flying around at this time about the upcoming release of Windows 8.1 (code named “Blue”, which represents a wave of product updates, including Windows Phone and others). I thought I‘d state my hopes for this release, not just in terms of user features, but also from a developer’s perspective. As a developer, I spend most of my time on my trusty laptop, not some tablet based device. Naturally, the desktop world is my friend. The Windows 8 Start screen is close to perfect for tablet...

תגים:MFC, COM, C++, .NET, C#, DEV, Win32, XAML, DirectX, Media Foundation, Windows 8, Windows Runtime, C++/CX, Windows Phone 8

Windows Media Foundation in Windows 8
20 November 12 10:45 AM | pavely | with no comments

Windows Media Foundation was introduced in Windows Vista as a future replacement for DirectShow , enhanced in Windows 7, and naturally, further enhanced in Windows 8. I’ve blogged about WMF before . While looking at the MSDN docs on WMF, it seems the content has not yet been updated for Windows 8. Windows 7 enhancements are considered there as such. Looking at the API reference, however, shows some new interfaces that are only supported starting with Windows 8. One such interface is IMFMediaEngine...

תגים:COM, C++, DEV, Win32, Media Foundation, Windows 8, Visual C++, Windows Runtime, Windows Phone 8

Windows Media Foundation: Controlling Camera Properties
19 May 12 11:05 PM | pavely | with no comments

I have blogged about Media Foundation before; it’s the “next generation” of DirectShow , introduced in Windows Vista, enhanced in Windows 7 and further enhanced in Windows 8 (more on that in a future post). One of the tasks I encountered recently was to do a video capture from a camera. This is not too difficult to do (once you understand how Media Foundation works) and there’s even two sample in the SDK. But how do you control various camera properties, such as focus, zoom, white balance, etc.?...

תגים:COM, C++, DEV, Win32, Native Development, Media Foundation

Getting Media File Info
20 March 11 11:55 AM | pavely | 9 comment(s)

So, what can we do with Media Foundation? One of the simplest things, perhaps, is getting information on some media file, somewhat similar to what we see in Windows Explorer, but we can dig deeper if we like. Let’s get started. First, we’ll create a simple Win32 console application named MediaInfo (I check the box to include ATL headers, we’ll use ATL smart pointers). We then add some Media Foundation includes (e.g. in StdAfx.h): #include <mfidl.h> #include <mfapi.h>   These are...

תגים:COM, C++, DEV, Win32, Media Foundation

Introduction to TopoEdit
11 March 11 05:33 PM | pavely | with no comments

In Windows Media Foundation, TopoEdit is the equivalent of DirectShow’s GraphEdit tool. Using a simple graphic interface, one can build topologies (the equivalent of a DirectShow filter graph), and “run” them, that is, start the flow of data, from a source node towards one or more output nodes. We’ll see that in a minute. To open TopoEdit, the Windows SDK should be installed. Navigate using Windows Explorer to something like C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin and run TopoEdit.Exe. You...

תגים:DEV, Win32, Tutorial, Audio, Media Foundation, TopoEdit

Introduction to Windows Media Foundation
07 March 11 11:26 PM | pavely | 47 comment(s)

I’ve been writing a new course on this technology, so I thought I’d share some of my experiences with the Windows Media Foundation. What is Windows Media Foundation? The Windows Media Foundation is technically the successor of DirectShow (which is still around and very much supported), introduced in Windows Vista and enhanced in Windows 7. It’s a multimedia platform, capable of playing, analyzing, writing and otherwise transforming media (mostly video & audio, but can technically be anything...

תגים:COM, C++, COM Apartments, Vista, DEV, Win32, Windows7, Media Foundation