Tag: Video

VCam: A Journey from Usenet to GitHub

Throughout many years of hashtag#DirectShow development, one project stood out with unwavering popularity: the Windows Virtual Camera sample ????. Originally authored by Vivek in 2005 or even earlier, it was shared on the “microsoft. public. win32. programmer. directx. video” Usenet conference. This project gained prominence because it addressed a problem that had no existing solution within the Windows SDK, and Microsoft had not expressed any intention to rectify it.

The source code for this virtual camera project was once hosted by Philip “The March Hare” on his personal website. However, given the passage of time, even that website does not longer exist.

We decided to breathe new life into this project, affectionately known as “VCam”, and made it available on GitHub: https://lnkd.in/dGUH9v79. Despite our confidence that the project and its approach are no longer current, there remains significant interest in this source code, with thousands of mentions across the internet.

At the GitHub repository, you’ll find not only the source code and build instructions but also pre-built binaries, demonstration, and references to the original contributors.

Microsoft Media Foundation and HoloLens: Enabling Real-Time Video Communication

A customer approached us with a specific request: they needed a code snippet that could compress video into the H.264/AVC video format. Additionally, they were developing an application for the hashtag#Microsoft hashtag#HoloLens, which was the previous generation of hashtag#mixedreality headsets.

Upon closer examination, we realized that the purpose was to enable video encoding and decoding in a hashtag#lowlatency, hashtag#realtime, multi-party video conferencing application. The challenge lay in achieving this on low-powered hardware with its unique platform and limitations.

The HoloLens utilizes the Microsoft UWP platform, which typically allows developers to avoid rewriting software for different platform devices. However, in this particular case, adaptation was necessary. The only viable approach for handling real-time video was to leverage hardware-assisted video encoding and decoding through Microsoft Media Foundation.

These devices come equipped with specialized GPUs that share similarities with traditional desktop graphics adapters but also have their own distinct characteristics. Essentially, we developed a subsystem specifically tailored for Microsoft HoloLens 1, enabling real-time video capture, compression, decompression, seamless camera integration, hashtag#unity3d integration, and audio hardware support.

Windows 11 Virtual Video Camera

Just a quick hookup of my test Media Foundation media source into new Windows 11 MFCreateVirtualCamera API. Software video source is presented by Windows 11 as a video capture device. Finally, there is a nice way to create virtual cameras, even though Windows 11 (Windows Build 22000) is a minimal requirement. Application produced video stream…

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WebCodecs in StreamingServer for JavaScript H.264 decoding

One another small addition to StreamingServer showcase/development application: verification for WebCodecs API video streaming. WebCodecs API offers browser applications video decoding capabilities: The WebCodecs API gives web developers low-level access to the individual frames of a video stream and chunks of audio. It is useful for web applications that require full control over the way…

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