DirectShow and Windows Media

[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Format 11 SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by Source Reader and Sink Writer. Source Reader and Sink Writer have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use Source Reader and Sink Writer instead of Windows Media Format 11 SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

As an alternative to using the Windows Media Format SDK exclusively, applications can also read and write Windows Media-based content by using the Microsoft® DirectShow® streaming architecture, as described in the following sections.

Section	Description
About DirectShow	Describes DirectShow in general terms and tells where to get more information about it.
Why Use DirectShow?	Describes how DirectShow simplifies certain tasks in the creation and playback of Windows Media–based content.
Reading ASF Files in DirectShow	Describes how to play ASF files using DirectShow.
Creating ASF Files in DirectShow	Describes how to create ASF files using DirectShow.
WMT_STATUS Event Notification in DirectShow	Describes which WMT_STATUS events are handled by the ASF Reader and ASF Writer filters, and how applications can receive those events.
DRM Support in DirectShow	Describes how to read and write DRM-protected files through DirectShow.
DirectShow QASF Reference	Contains the reference documentation for the DirectShow components that support Windows Media.

 

Three sample applications in the SDK illustrate the use of DirectShow: DSCopy, DSPlay, and DSSeekFM. For more information, see Sample Applications.

Note

Applications that use the QASF components included in this SDK require the Microsoft DirectX® 8.1 or later SDK runtime to be installed on Windows® 2000, Windows 98, and Windows 95 systems. Specifically, this runtime is required by the DMO Wrapper filter which hosts the Windows Media codecs in a DirectShow filter graph.