{"id":1233,"date":"2011-07-08T17:26:06","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T15:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alax.info\/blog\/?p=1233"},"modified":"2011-07-25T16:32:16","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T14:32:16","slug":"directshow-app-mess-google-video-chat-vs-skype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alax.info\/blog\/1233","title":{"rendered":"DirectShow App Mess: Google Video Chat vs. Skype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two widely popular applications, which use DirectShow API appeared to be locked in a combat: Google video chat is installing a plugin which registers artificial video capture sources “Google Camera Adapter 0” and “Google Camera Adapter 1”.<\/p>\n

As the application does not announce any integration capabilities and is only using video for internal purposes for in-browser video, the approach with system-wide device registration is, well, questionable.<\/p>\n

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No need to mention, that devices are not operational: they are giving ERROR_DLL_INIT_FAILED (Error 0x8007045A) as soon as you try to instantiate a filter in a DirectShow video capture enabled application.<\/p>\n

In-browser Google Video Chat itself does work and shows video from “real” DirectShow devices, including such artificial as created by IP Video Source<\/a> tool. Google developers prefer still to take data off the device and as soon as possible leave DirectShow domain, as their graph looks like:<\/p>\n

Video Capture Source -> Smart Tee Filter<\/a> -> Sample Grabber Filter<\/a> -> Null Renderer Filter<\/a><\/p>\n

While Google plugin developers might need some interprocess synchronization, as the plugin runs in a child “plugin container” process (plugin-container.exe), introduction of virtual video capture devices is not necessary, but is a plain garbage for the operating system and DirectShow environment.<\/p>\n

For some reason, Google developers decided to introduce a special thing: they mirror captured video left-to right when it comes to showing picture capture locally. Well, quite possibly it starts a new era in video conferencing: one will not see a direct copy of video sent remotely, but instead he will be given a mirrored thing.<\/p>\n

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The curious part is, however, the effect the broken devices introduce to another popular software – Skype.<\/p>\n

As Skype is capable of video capturing from a DirectShow device, for video-enabled conferencing, it enumerates the available devices and definitely gets in touch with the aliens from Google planet, which are already known to be broken junk.<\/p>\n

The outcome appears to be subject to chances, there are two possible outcomes and only one is such that is more or less good for a user:<\/p>\n