Playing directshow streams asynchronously into composited output - c++

I'm a DirectShow newbie. I'm trying to get DirectShow to playback a set of media files but NOT simultaneously.
I've tried allocating one graph and using RendeFile to add each file into it but when I invoke IMediaControl::Run, they ALL begin playing at the same time.
I've tried allocating one graph and one IMediaControl per file and then calling Run at different times on each. This works, the streams play independantly.
How do I combine the streams to an output window?
Is it possible to have a master surface on which the other streams are rendered into rectangles?
Since the streams are not in the same graph, can it be done?
What do I use for a surface or output?
Thanks

All filters are expected to change state in a graph together, so you indeed need a separate graph for every file you suppose to play back independently from others.
If you are going to play files simply side by side, without effects and overlapping etc., the easiest option is to use separate video renderers and use them as controls, properly positioning them in your UI.
If you instead want something more sophisticated, then there are two ways to choose from: you either take decompressed video/audio out of DirectShow filter graph using Sample Grabber or a similar filter, and then you are responsible for presenting data yourself with other APIs. Or you implement a custom allocator/presented (also known as renderless mode of operation of video renderer) and finely control the output of video, which in particular allows to get a frame into texture or offscreen surface leaving presentation itself to you.

Related

Recording and Saving the Screen using C++ on Windows

I'm trying to write an application that records and saves the screen in C++ on the windows platform. I'm not sure where to start with this. I assume I need some sort of API, (FFMPEG, maybe OpenGL?). Could someone point me in the right direction?
You could start by looking at Windows remote desktop protocol, maybe some programming libraries are provided for that.
I know of a product that intercepts calls into the Windows GDI dll and uses that to store the screen drawing activities.
A far more simpler approach would be to do screenshots as often as possible and somehow minimize redundant data (parts of the screen that didn't change between frames).
If the desired output of your app is a video file (like mpeg) you are probably better off just grabbing frames and feeding them into a video encoder. I don't know how fast the encoders are these days. Ffmpeg would be a good place to start.
If the encoder turns out not fast enough, you can try storing the frames and encoding the video file afterwards. Consecutive frames should have many matching pixels, so you could use that to reduce the amount of data stored.

Using Async_reader and Wave Parser in DirectShow filter graph results in video seeking issues

Some background:
I am attempting to create a DirectShow source filter based on the pushsource example from the DirectShow SDK. This essentially outputs a set of bitmaps, each of which can last for a long time (for example 30 seconds), to a video. I have set up a filter graph which uses Async_reader with a Wave Parser for audio and my new filter to push the video (the filter is a CSourceStream and I populate my frames in the FillBuffer function). These are both connected to a WMASFWriter to output a WMV.
The problem:
When I attempt to seek through the resulting video, I have to wait until a bitmap's start time occurs before it is displayed. For example, if I'm currently seeing bitmap 4 and skip back to the time which bitmap 2 is displayed the video output will not change until the third bitmap starts. Initially I wondered if I wasn't allowing FillBuffer to be called enough (as at the moment it's only once per bitmap) however I have since noted that when the audio track is very short (just a second long perhaps), I can seek through the video as expected. Is there a another way I should be introducing audio into the filter graph? Do I need to perform some kind of indexing when the WMV has been rendered? I'm at a bit of a loss...
You may need to do indexing as a post-processing step. Try indexing it with Windows Media File Editor from Windows Media Encoder SDK and see if this improves seeking.
Reducing key frame interval in the encoder profile may improve seeking. This can be done in Windows Media Profile Editor from the SDK. Note that this will cause file size increase.

Saving frames in a directshow filter

I have an application that relies on a C++ DirectShow transform filter, for the purpose of analyzing what is going on step by step I want to save each frame from the camera that the filter processes. What would be the simplest method to achieve this in the filter itself?
Can you insert sample grabber filter into the graph?
Beware though: the frame will be in some pixel format, and if it's not RGB24 you'll be in a lot of trouble to analyze it. If possible, configure your input source to RGB24 and you'll be on your way.
Expand your question if you need more info.

How to overlay direct3d in directshow

I am looking for a tutorial or documentation on how to overlay direct3d on top of a video (webcam) feed in directshow.
I want to provide a virtual web cam (a virtual device that looks like a web cam to the system (ie. so that it be used where ever a normal webcam could be used like IM video chats)
I want to capture a video feed from a webcam attached to the computer.
I want to overlay a 3d model on top of the video feed and provide that as the output.
I had planned on doing this in directshow only because it looked possible to do this in it. If you have any ideas about possible alternatives, I am all ears.
I am writing c++ using visual studio 2008.
Use the Video Mixing Renderer Filter to render the video to a texture, then render it to the scene as a full screen quad. After that you can render the rest of the 3D stuff on top and then present the scene.
Are you after a filter that sits somewhere in the graph that renders D3D stuff over the video?
If so then you need to look at deriving a filter from CTransformFilter. Something like the EZRGB example will give you something to work from. Basically once you have this sorted your filter needs to do the Direct 3D rendering and, literally, insert the resulting image into the direct show stream. Alas you can't render the Direct3D directly to a direct show video frame so you will have to do your rendering then lock the front/back buffer and copy the 3D data out and into the direct show stream. This isn't ideal as it WILL be quite slow (compared to standard D3D rendering) but its the best you can do, to my knowledge.
Edit: In light of your update what you want is quite complicated. You need to create a source filter (You should look at the CPushSource example) to begin with. Once you've done that you will need to register it as a video capture source. Basically you need to do this by using the IFilterMapper2::RegisterFilter call in your DLLRegisterServer function and pass in a class ID of "CLSID_VideoInputDeviceCategory". Adding the Direct3D will be as I stated above.
All round you want to spend as much time reading through the DirectShow samples in the windows SDK and start modifying them to do what YOU want them to do.

Displaying a video in DirectX

What is the best/easiest way to display a video (with sound!) in an application using XAudio2 and Direct3D9/10?
At the very least it needs to be able to stream potentially larger videos, and take care of the fact that the windows aspect ratio may differ from the videos (eg by adding letter boxes), although ideally Id like the ability to embed the video into a 3D scene.
I could of course work out a way to load each frame into a texture, discarding/reusing the textures once rendered, and playing the audio separately through XAudio2, however as well as writing a loader for at least one format, ive also got to deal with stuff like synchronising the video and audio components, so hopefully there is an eaier solution available or even a ready made free one with a suitable lisence (commercial distribution in binary form, dynamic linking is fine in the case of say LGPL).
In Windows SDK, there is a DirectShow example for rendering video to texture. It handles audio output too.
But there are limitations and I can't honestly call it easy.
Have you looked at Bink video? Its what lots of games use for video playback. Works great and you don't have to code all that video stuff yourself from scratch.