Programming Microsoft DirectShow for Digital Video and Television

Author: Mark D. Pesce List Price: $49.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0735618216 Publisher: Microsoft Press (12 February, 2003) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 27,286 Average Customer Rating: 3.33 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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

Some of the examples in the book don't work easily and take some convincing (even after i resolved the hard coded path problems...FYI - install the DirectX SDK in its default directory to save you much time). Moreso, the '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 include sample problems) and is definatly the book to get for DirectShow programming.

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