1. If you are searching for software or an utility:
   • Software: check NTFS Links, DHCP Server pages
   • WordPress Plugins: check Google Talk Sidebar Widget pages
   • Utilities: check Utilities category and check subcategories on the sidebar
2. If you are you interested in C++ development, ATL and WTL:
   • If you are interested in C++ DirectShow/Media Foundation development, check DirectShow and DMO tags;
     Important: if you have a DirectShow question which is not directly related to posted material, please rather post it in DirectShow Development MSDN Forum, especially instead of asking me in the website chat
   • Check Technology category, ATL and WTL subcategories, you might also be interested in Source Code; additionally source code is available via Assembla’s Trac

Partial Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included (Win32, x64); installation instructions are in another post.

FilterMapperSpy.h(186): CFilterMapperSpy::EnumMatchingFilters: nFlags 0x0, bExactMatch 0, nMinimalMerit 0x00200001, bInputNeeded 1, nInputTypeCount 1, pInputPinCategory NULL, bRender 1, bOutputNeeded 0, nOutputTypeCount 0, pOutputPinCategory NULL
FilterMapperSpy.h(191): CFilterMapperSpy::EnumMatchingFilters: nInputTypeIndex 0, MajorType {73647561-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}, Subtype {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
FilterMapperSpy.h(212): CFilterMapperSpy::EnumMatchingFilters: pMoniker @device:sw:{083863F1-70DE-11D0-BD40-00A0C911CE86}\{AB9D6472-752F-43F6-B29E-61207BDA8E06}
FilterMapperSpy.h(220): CFilterMapperSpy::EnumMatchingFilters: sFriendlyName "RDP DShow Redirection Filter", sDescription "", sDevicePath ""
FilterMapperSpy.h(212): CFilterMapperSpy::EnumMatchingFilters: pMoniker @device:cm:{E0F158E1-CB04-11D0-BD4E-00A0C911CE86}\Default DirectSound Device
FilterMapperSpy.h(220): CFilterMapperSpy::EnumMatchingFilters: sFriendlyName "Default DirectSound Device", sDescription "", sDevicePath ""

Important is that DirectShow’s internals are using the mapper through COM instantiation and this provides a safe method to override default behavior process wide in order to, for example, extend Intelligent Connect functionality onto custom, unregistered globally, private filters.

Also, the binary is renamed from FilterGraphSpy.dll to DirectShowSpy.dll.

Partial Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included (Win32, x64); installation instructions are in another post.

Filter Graph Spy is offering three new interfaces that provide extensibility of the spy:

• IFilterGraphAddRemoveHook
• IFilterGraphConnectHook
• IFilterGraphStateControlHook

The interfaces are contained in the type library and can be imported using #import directive. An implementation of one or more of these interfaces will receive hook style calls corresponding to respective Filter Graph Manager calls, system wide including in context of other applications.

A COM object may be registered as a hook object with Spy and NoThreadSpy COM classes under predefined registry keys:

Spy will instantiate the registered hook objects and forward them the calls it receive, before passing them to system Filter Graph Manager object. A hook object has an option to override default processing, including, for example, inserting its own filter in between. For example, IFilterGraph::Reconnect call is implemented the following way:

STDMETHOD(Reconnect)(IPin* pPin) throw()
{
    _Z4(atlTraceCOM, 4, _T("...\n"));
    HOOK_PROLOG(CFilterGraphConnectHookHost)
        OnReconnect(pT, pPin, &bDefault);
    HOOK_EPILOG()
    return m_pInnerFilterGraph2->Reconnect(pPin);
}

Before passing the call to original Reconnect method, spy is iterating through associated hooks, passing them IFilterGraphConnectHook::OnReconnect call. Setting bDefault parameter to FALSE will prevent spy from passing the call to original method.

Included BdaHooks project shows a sample implementation of the hooking COM classes (note .rgs registration).

Filter Graph Spy is compatible with all current Windows operating systems, 32-bit and 64-bit (x64), in particular including:

• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows XP
• Windows 2000

NOTE: DirectShow Filter Graph Spy is NOT suitable for production environment, it is NOT licensed to be redistributed to be a part of production state software item.

Partial Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included (Win32, x64); installation instructions are in another post.

On 64-bit operating systems DLLs are 32-bit and 64-bit images, and an important thing about them is that there is no way to mix them in a single process. That is, 32-bit DLLs are for 32-bit processes, running inside WOW64 subsystem, 64-bit DLLs are for native processes.

So how comes that running regsvr32 from command line we can register both 32-bit and 64-bit DLLs. Does the system automatically identify image type of the DLL? Yes, the screenshot below illustrates registration of 64-bit DLL from command line “regsvr32 FilterGraphSpy.dll“.

Command line interpreter starts a 32-bit version of regsvr32 tool, which is located in SysWOW64 directory. It detects that provided image is 64-bit and spawns a 64-bit twin from system32 directory, forwarding the registration task to it. The latter loads 64-bit DLL, being native 64-bit process itself, and does the thing.

As simple as that.

There has been a number of posts on Internet, but none of the top ones appeared to be relevant.

The problem is reproduced extremely simple:

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    ATLVERIFY(SUCCEEDED(CoInitialize(NULL)));
    {
        //CoLoadLibrary(L"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files\\System\\Ole DB\\oledb32.dll", TRUE);
        CComPtr<IDBInitialize> pDbInitialize;
        const HRESULT nResult = pDbInitialize.CoCreateInstance(L"Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0", NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER);
        _tprintf(_T("nResult 0x%08x\n"), nResult);
    }
    CoUninitialize();
    return 0;
}

Oops, the code gives error REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG 0×80040154 “Class not registered”. It looked like system was unable to locate one of the internally used DLLs – oledb32.dll, and if we help by uncommenting the line commented in the code snippet above, the error changes to  ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND 0×8007007e “The specified module could not be found”.

The problem appears to be that one of the system components, which is involved, “Microsoft OLE DB Data Conversion Library” is registered with the system using a REG_EXPAND_SZ value, to be located using path “%CommonProgramFiles(x86)%\System\Ole DB\oledb32.dll”. It is obvious that CommonProgramFiles(x86) is placeholder to be expanded, but does the expansion succeed?

On my system there was no such environment string, so expansion failed. There however was CommonProgramFiles, and it pointed to correct location. So, this hot fix makes it work right:

BOOL UpdateEnvironmentVariables()
{
    CString sCommonProgramFilesX86;
    sCommonProgramFilesX86.GetEnvironmentVariable(_T("CommonProgramFiles(x86)"));
    if(sCommonProgramFilesX86.IsEmpty())
    {
        CString sCommonProgramFiles;
        sCommonProgramFiles.GetEnvironmentVariable(_T("CommonProgramFiles"));
        if(!sCommonProgramFiles.IsEmpty())
        {
            ATLVERIFY(SetEnvironmentVariable(_T("CommonProgramFiles(x86)"), sCommonProgramFiles));
            return TRUE;
        }
    }
    return FALSE;
}

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    ATLVERIFY(SUCCEEDED(CoInitialize(NULL)));
    {
        UpdateEnvironmentVariables();
        CComPtr<IDBInitialize> pDbInitialize;
        const HRESULT nResult = pDbInitialize.CoCreateInstance(L"Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0", NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER);
        _tprintf(_T("nResult 0x%08x\n"), nResult);
    }
    CoUninitialize();
    return 0;
}

I am under impression that the problem is not specific to Windows 7. I remember similar symptoms on Windows XP system, but they were not critical and not investigated to solution. It rather seems that OLE DB component is registering itself using a reference to environment variable which is not present on a number of systems.

However, for Video Mixing Renderers, version 7 and 9, the preferred and recommended mode is windowless, where no IVideoWindow interface is available.

Note The IVMRWindowlessControl or IVMRWindowlessControl9 interface is now preferred over IVideoWindow. For more information, see Using Windowless Mode.

So in order to implement full screen mode it takes the application to attach Video Mixing Renderer filter to a private frameless window, to its entire client area and expand the window to entire monitor area.

The sample project FullScreenWindowlessVmrSample01 is illustrating this technique.

Main application dialog owns a special window to host renderer, implemented by CRendererDialog class.

class CRendererDialog :
    public CDialogImpl<CRendererDialog>
{
public:

    enum { IDD = IDD_RENDERER };

BEGIN_MSG_MAP_EX(CRendererDialog)
    MSG_WM_INITDIALOG(OnInitDialog)
    MSG_WM_DESTROY(OnDestroy)
    MSG_WM_ERASEBKGND(OnEraseBkgnd)
    MSG_WM_PAINT(OnPaint)
    MSG_WM_DISPLAYCHANGE(OnDisplayChange)
    MSG_WM_KEYDOWN(OnKeyDown)
    COMMAND_ID_HANDLER_EX(IDCANCEL, OnCancel)
END_MSG_MAP()

private:
    CMainDialog& m_Owner;
//...

The dialog template does not have a caption, it has no frame and has its window rectangle equal to client area. As a result, spanning the Video Mixing Renderer to the entire client area and proper positioning of the dialog window is showing video on the entire monitor.

ATLVERIFY(m_RendererDialog.Create(m_hWnd));
ATLVERIFY(m_RendererDialog.MoveWindow(MonitorData.m_Position));
m_RendererDialog.ShowWindow(SW_SHOWNORMAL);
// ...
ATLENSURE_SUCCEEDED(pVmrWindowlessControl->SetVideoClippingWindow(m_RendererDialog));
ATLENSURE_SUCCEEDED(pVmrWindowlessControl->SetVideoPosition(NULL, m_RendererDialog.GetVideoPosition()));

Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included. The project is using ATL and WTL libraries.

I have a video stream with variable frame rate, I want to make this in to a constant  frame rate. Do you know of any filters that could help me with this?

Such filter is actually quite easy. You only need to update time stamps of the media samples that are going through. I am not aware of  an “out of the box” ready filter, but you can even do it without special filter: if you build your graph with Sample Grabber Filter in it in  the place of interest, and initialize it to have a callback for each sample, then in SampleCB method you will be able to update time stamps using methods of IMediaSample interface. This is sufficient to redistribute the frames on the timeline, so that they go at constant frame rate.

In your opinion what is the best way to scale the video?

The best depends on what is the criteria (speed, quality etc). The simplest for me while very efficient – and I did this a number of times – is to use a custom filter which inside it uses StretchBlt function on a per frame basis to scale input RGB video into output RGB video of a different resolution.

As the goal was to find out details about connection media types between the filters being spied over, the spy received a new feature of logging graph details each time the graph is going to running state:

Filter 7: Name "[1BDADev]", Class {17CCA71B-ECD7-11D0-B908-00A0C9223196}, State 2
 Pin 1: Name "MPEG2 Transport", Direction "Input", Peer "[0BDATnr].MPEG2 Transport"
 Connection media type:
 majortype {E436EB83-524F-11CE-9F53-0020AF0BA770}, subtype {E06D8023-DB46-11CF-B4D1-00805F6CBBEA}, pUnk 0x00000000
 bFixedSizeSamples 0, bTemporalCompression 0, lSampleSize 1
 formattype {8DEDA6FD-AC5F-4334-8ECF-A4BA8FA7D0F0}, cbFormat 24, pbFormat 0x00350868
 [0x0000] BC 00 00 00 38 9A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 [0x0010] 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 Pin 2: Name "MPEG2 Transport", Direction "Output", Peer "Infinite Pin Tee Filter[BDATsIft].Input"
 Connection media type:
 majortype {E436EB83-524F-11CE-9F53-0020AF0BA770}, subtype {F4AEB342-0329-4FDD-A8FD-4AFF4926C978}, pUnk 0x00000000
 bFixedSizeSamples 1, bTemporalCompression 0, lSampleSize 39480
 formattype {0F6417D6-C318-11D0-A43F-00A0C9223196}, cbFormat 0, pbFormat 0x00000000
Filter 8: Name "[0BDATnr]", Class {17CCA71B-ECD7-11D0-B908-00A0C9223196}, State 2
 Pin 1: Name "Input0", Direction "Input", Peer "Microsoft Network Provider[NwPvd].Antenna Out"
 Connection media type:
 majortype {71985F41-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0}, subtype {E436EB8E-524F-11CE-9F53-0020AF0BA770}, pUnk 0x00000000
 bFixedSizeSamples 0, bTemporalCompression 0, lSampleSize 1
 formattype {0F6417D6-C318-11D0-A43F-00A0C9223196}, cbFormat 0, pbFormat 0x00000000
 Pin 2: Name "MPEG2 Transport", Direction "Output", Peer "[1BDADev].MPEG2 Transport"
 Connection media type:
 majortype {E436EB83-524F-11CE-9F53-0020AF0BA770}, subtype {E06D8023-DB46-11CF-B4D1-00805F6CBBEA}, pUnk 0x00000000
 bFixedSizeSamples 0, bTemporalCompression 0, lSampleSize 1
 formattype {8DEDA6FD-AC5F-4334-8ECF-A4BA8FA7D0F0}, cbFormat 24, pbFormat 0x00350868
 [0x0000] BC 00 00 00 38 9A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 [0x0010] 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Partial Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included; installation instructions are in another post.

• Username and password contained in URL are honored for Basic HTTP authentication
• Correctly parsed HTTP response headers with quotes, e.g.:
  Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=“myboundary“

Partial Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included.