Customer Reviews

Programming Microsoft DirectShow for Digital Video and Television (Pro-Developer)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

There are only two book in print on programming DirectShow -- this one and Michael Linetsky's "Programming Microsoft DirectShow." The good news is that this book is substantially better than Mr. Linetsky's. The bad news is it is still not very good. The basic problem with this book, as with many programming books, is that it is structured around the API instead of around the task that you are trying to do.
To elaborate, consider a common task that you would want to do with DirectShow capture. How do you ensure that your application sets the capture input to 24-bit RGB at 640x480 pixels? The answer is, "it depends on the capture filter." If the capture filter is a Video for Windows (VfW) wrapper filter, you set these properties in the capture filter itself. If you are using a WDM driver, you need to access the crossbar to set them. In general, VfW filters remember the settings between runs and the WDM drivers do not. Programmatically, it isn't even obvious how you know which kind of capture filter is being used by any given system. The differences between filters, and how to plan for them in your application, is completely ignored in this book.
How to create an app that works the same way with both these common drivers is a signficant issue. But this book is not structured around developing applications -- it's structured around documenting the API. That seriously limits the value of this or similar kinds of programming books.
There are some substantial oversights even in explaining the API. For example, when Mr. Pesce describes saving a GraphEdit filter graph to file, he fails to mention that this file is valid only for the system on which it was created. This is a significant point -- one that every DirectShow programmer ends up rediscovering for himself the hard way. This is just the kind of "hard knocks" experience that a book like this should ease you over.
If you need to learn to program DirectShow using C++, get this book. But don't expect too much help from it.

This is a pathetic book. I have very little respect for any author that would produce this kind of trash. This is just somebody trying to make money because there are essentially no books available for DirectX. Throw together some "stuff" from the SDK and call it a book. Real pathetic Microsoft Press, I expected you to care more about your reputation than this.

The DirectX SDK docs do a better job than this book except that it is not as convenient as a real book that you can flip through.

I do not understand how it got such good reviews, they must not have actually read the DirectX SDK docs. I was eagerly awaiting this books arrival hoping the examples would be substinative, but they were lame, incomplete, and no more helpful than the FREE samples and docs that came with the SDK.

To say this book covers "all the details of DirectShow" is just not accurate. Assuming this book was useful, it would take 3 or 4 books like this one to provide "all the details".

This book is very high level (general). Do not expect the examples to show you how to do anything complicated.

Also, this book was supposed to be about Digital Video and Television. Last time I watched a DVD movie or TV, the movie/show would have been worthless without the audio. Yet, this book only has 14 pages dedicated to audio out of its total 414 pages. There is also about 20 other pages sprinkled around (and that's being generous). Why is this important, because coding audio is different than coding video, and any other DirecShow task. Sure, it's COM, so it's just another set of interfaces, but it is just that, another set or at least it is using the same set of interfaces differently. Same goes for other DirectShow tasks. Even the treatment of Video is very general.

I remember when Windows 3.1 and OS/2 (both from Microsoft) first came out. Programming Windows and OS/2 was considered very difficult and specialized because the documentation/books were few and not in depth. Well, now programming Windows and even OS/2 is just expected from even the novice programmer. Why? Because there are many books from many people, and Microsoft provides tons of information and real examples, and where examples are lacking, 3rd parties fill the need. That is simply not the case with DirectShow. True enough the DirectX SDK is pretty good for an SDK, but this book does nothing more than provide an incomplete hard copy of part of the SDK.

For crying out loud, the following is all over his example code "This code is also stolen from the DirectX SDK". So, just read the SDK don't waste your money on this book.

It might be better than no book, but marginally.

I wanted to like this book - mostly because I really needed a book covering some of the problems I was having with DirectShow. The company I work for has DirectShow as the core component of their customer-facing software. I wasn't brought in to work on that part of it, but it quickly fell under my umbrella. I had no DirectShow experience, so I turned to the SDK docs and looked for a few books.

Well I have to say that if it wasn't for the SDK docs I would have been sunk. Both this book and Programming Direct Show have been real losers. This is better than the other book, but that isn't saying much.

Like previous posters I was disappointed by the audio. I have to support file playback, streaming, and control of a tv card through my interface. Its not rocket science, but the dearth of material on controlling tv cards in this book made it all but useless to me. The same material exists in the same form on MS DirectShow docs - the author added next to nothing.

I did give it 2 stars because sometimes it is nice to have the SDK documentation - with a little extra - to read when you are away from the computer. The author however should be ashamed for putting out such a cut-n-paste effort, pathetic.

I have to work with DShow for my job. This book is the only one available (afaik)... But it is awfully written.
Mark D. Pesce does not EXPLAIN anything, he just DESCRIBES a set of, more or less enhanced, SDK samples.
It is a shame.
I will read it from the start to the very end because I have to do so. I am really tired of this.

I bought this book several months ago but I've held off writing a review as I have been trying to learn DirectShow.

It is not exactly just the SDK documentation in a paper binding but it isn't a whole lot more either. Most people trying to how to use DirectShow will probably buy this book anyway and they probably should: it is at least better than nothing. But don't get your hopes up.

My biggest gripe is that at least one of the examples in this book which does not come directly from the SDK sample programs doesn't seem to actually work. It compiles, and it runs, but it just doesn't display anything.

I wanted to read more about the new VMR9, but the book disappointed me with the thin coverage of VMR9 and videoplayback in general. I guess the book is all right on the topics filters, video editing and video caption.

If you're planning to learn DirectShow or are already using it and want a clear explanation of the covered topics, I highly recommend this book. It covers the information that you will need to understand how to use the existing DirectShow components and create your own DirectShow filters. It is a good complement to the DirectShow SDK documentation and the SDK examples.

The book contains a CD with the examples, an e-book version and the DirectX 9.0 SDK. The SDK is difficult to download from Microsoft if you have a dial up connection because of its size.

Some of the topics covered are:

DirectShow Concepts: teaches you the basics about DS

GraphEdit: learn about a powerful tool that allows you to understand the interaction of DS filters

Programming: how to use COM objects, how to set up your projects

Capturing: samples for capturing audio, audio & video from webcams, capturing from DV camcorders, TV tuners

DirectShow Edition Services: how to edit and preview existing media clips adding transitions and effects

Video Mixing Renderer: the powerful video display filter that allows you to do PIP and other advanced effects

Filters: create your own transform filters to provide specialized effects and color conversions; use the sample grabber to examine the contents of video or audio frames as they pass through a DS graph; use DirectX Media Objects to simplify the implementation of filters

Advanced topics: understand the AVI format, use DS with WindowsMedia, MPEG support in DS, the DS Transform Filter Wizard (requires VS.NET), optimizing file input and output

As of DirectX 9.0, there is only basic support for managed DirectX so the examples are all in unmanaged C++ code.

As for the other reviewers complaint about the structure, my opinion is the book is well organized by topic for learning the API. It doesn't cover everything you could possibly ask, but it gives you a substantial foundation that will enable you to explore the interfaces further.

The Linetsky book which I also purchased does not compare to this one (I would give that one 2 stars--look at the number 5 star reviews from NY,NY with little detial--a little suspicious?).

One weakness of the book is that it does not consistently use ATL smart pointers. This makes the examples longer than they need to be and slightly more complex. If you're going to use DirectX, I highly recommend you get familiar with CComPtr and CComQIPtr and CComBStr. They make writing clean code much simpler. I would give the book 4.5 stars, if possible, because of this.

I knew nothing about DirectShow before I read this book. This book helped me quickly gain enough knowledge to start creating programs that use DirectShow capabilities. Yes, all the information is in the SDK document. But my learning time would have been much longer if I were to start by reading SDK documents. The author has digested the document and selected a subset of information to create this book. The book is self-contained enough that I didn't need to read other documents to understand the example codes. It is a good first DirectShow book for DirectShow beginners.

This is a great book. It covers all the specifics of DirectShow and helps you get going on some pretty complicated projects.

What it doesnt do is go into any media specific problems that you may want to do (like VBI or CC Decoding) but it will help you get your hand on the approrpiate stream.

It focuses mostly on capturing AVIs from various devices and provides more support than the MSDN site.

Some of the examples in the book don't work easily and take some convincing (even after i resolved the hard coded include & link paths problems in the example code on the included CD. FYI--install the DirectX SDK in its default directory to save you much time). Moreso, the provided 'Direct Show Filter Wizard' just didn't work at all.

I am running .NET 2003 and its obvious .NET 2002 was out during the writing of this book. Though I feel the samples shouldn't be outdated so quickly. At the least, there should some updated samples for download (which I could not find at the time of writing this review).

That said, the book did answer all my questions (regardless of the included sample problems) and is definatly the book to get for DirectShow programming and describes the mystery that is the MSDN documentation.

The book is written for experienced programmers who need to get an understanding of the abstractions behind the API, and it does a good job. I read about half in a day -- it's not heavy stuff -- and though I did feel that it left many small questions unanswered, it covered all the big ones.