Transition from DirectShow to Media Foundation

Comparison Between Media Foundation and DirectShow

We have entered the era of HD Digital Media. In the future, Digital HD will be everywhere. However, he needs robust protection, which is not available on the current digital media platform. Media fundation exists for this purpose.
Let's take a look at the high-definition numbers. This platform needs to be flexible and easy to recover from small failures. A large number of different quality video and audio. Media foundations must be considered for this purpose. For example, supports the next generation of HD technology:
1: DirectX video acceleration (dxva) 2.0 provides more efficient video acceleration than dxva1.0, more stable, the latest video decoding capabilities, and extended hardware video acceleration. In dxva2.0, Windows can directly process Some HD content and easily recover errors.
2: Color-space can be stored throughout the video processing process, so there is no conversion loss in the middle, and users can enjoy high-fidelity image quality. This can also reduce CPU and other consumption.
3: the enhanced video Renderer (enchanced video render EVR) enhances video processing and clock.

Let's take a look at file protection. After a user buys a movie, he can upload the movie to one of his devices (some devices can be recorded directly during playback ), there will be multiple protection modes in this process. After purchase, protection will be used, protection against recording during playback, and replication protection. If a protection is not completed correctly, it will make the whole set of protection meaningless. Therefore, a seamless platform is required to collaborate with each other. Media Foundation exists for this purpose.
Finally, let's take a look at DirectShow. directShow APIs are indeed very common and omnipotent for these Digital HD media applications. However, DirectShow, as an old technology for more than 10 years, is no longer powerful. For example:
1: The process is static, so it is very difficult to implement dynamic graph and Major format change.
2: The thread model of DirectShow filter is very complex. It is too difficult to fully understand and never make mistakes.
3: DirectShow filter can only be used for DirectShow.
4: DirectShow does not support file protection.
As a successor to DirectShow, Media Foundation has appeared and will not immediately replace DirectShow. As a first step, it will show its influence on Vista.
However, until now, the Media Foundation has only been able to implement protection for the media (proteced media process) and has not yet made enough extensions and replacements for DirectShow.

Appendix: feature comparisons

The following table compares the features of Media Foundation with those of DirectShow.

Feature Group	Feature	Media Foundation	DirectShow
Basic functionality	Audio and video Rendering	Yes	Yes
	Event Notification	Yes	Yes
	Device Enumeration	No	Yes
	Component Enumeration	Yes	Yes
	Synchronization to reference clock	Yes	Yes
	Seeking	Yes	Yes
	Improved stress resilience	Yes	No
Content Protection	Component Validation	Yes	No
	Content Protection policy negotiation	Yes	No
	Interoperability Between content protection technologies	Yes	No
	Protection against kernel-mode and user-mode threats	Yes	No
	Component revocation and Renewal	Yes	No
	Video output Protection Management	Yes	Yes
Media tasks	Audio capture	No	Yes
	Video Capture	No	Yes
	Video Editing	No	Yes
	DVD playback and navigation	No	Yes
	MPEG-2 support	No	Yes
	ASF support	No	Yes
	TV technologies	No	Yes
	Stream Buffer Engine	No	Yes
	Encoder API	No	Yes
Video Renderer	Substream mixing using per-pixel or planar alpha blending	Yes	Yes
	Customizable video Composition	No	Yes
	Support for custom presenters	Yes	Yes
	Windowless Rendering	Yes	Yes
	Multimonitor support	Yes	Yes
	Dxva	Yes	Yes
	DirectDraw exclusive mode	Yes	Yes
	Backward compatibility with existing applications	Yes	Yes
	Accurate frame stepping	Yes	Yes
	Alpha blending of image data	Yes	Yes
	Glitch resilience	Yes	No
	Enhanced video fidelity	Yes	No
	Enhanced Content Protection robustness	Yes	No
	Standalone use	Yes	No
	Standalone mixing component	Yes	No
Transforms (MFT or DMO)	Synchronous Data Processing	Yes	Yes
	Simple programming model	Yes	Yes
	Standalone use	Yes	Yes
	Multiple inputs and multiple outputs	Yes	Yes
	Dynamic Number of streams	Yes	No
	Access to sample-level metadata	Yes	No
	In-Place Processing	Yes	Yes
	Dynamic format changes	Yes	No
	Quality Adjustment	Yes	No
	Rate Change	Yes	No

The following table compares the features of Media Foundation with those of the Windows Media Format SDK.

Feature Group	Feature	Media Foundation	Format SDK
ASF file features	Audio and Video Streams	Yes	Yes
	Image streams	No	Yes
	Arbitrary streams (text, file, web, custom data)	No	Yes
	Script Commands	No	Yes
	Data Unit extensions	Yes	Yes
	SMPTE Time Code support	No	Yes
	Mutual Exclusion	Yes	Yes
	Stream prioritization	Yes	Yes
	Bandwidth sharing	No	Yes
	Indexes	Yes	Yes
	Markers	Yes	Yes
	Multiple bit rate stream	Yes	Yes
	Multiple Language Support	Yes	Yes
Codec features	CBR Encoding	Yes	Yes
	VBR Encoding	Yes	Yes
	Two-pass encoding	Yes	Yes
	High-resolution audio support	Yes	Yes
	Low Delay audio	Yes	Yes
	S/pdif audio output	Yes	Yes
	Video Image	Yes	Yes
	Device conformance Template	Yes	Yes
	Video complexity settings	Yes	Yes
	Frame interpolation	Yes	Yes
	DirectX video Acceleration	Yes	Yes
File writing	Video resizing	Yes	Yes
	Color Space Conversion	Yes	Yes
	Audio resampling	Yes	Yes
	ASF file sink	Yes	Yes
	Network sinks	No	Yes
	Push sinks	No	Yes
	Watermarking support	No	Yes
	Input formats, input settings, and data unit extensions	Yes	Yes
	WMA smart Recompression	No	Yes
	Multichannel audio	Yes	Yes
File Reading	User-allocated sample support	No	Yes
	Synchronous reading	No	Yes
	Output Format Enumeration	Yes	Yes
	Multichannel audio	Yes	Yes
	MP3 support	Yes	Yes
	Network Sources	Yes	Yes
Metadata	ID3 support	No	Yes
	Custom metadata	Yes	Yes
Digital Rights Management	Live DRM	No	Yes
	DRM Individualization	Yes	Yes
	Back up and restore DRM licenses	Yes	Yes
	View DRM attributes in the metadata Editor	Yes	Yes
	Output protection levels	Yes	Yes
	License revocation	Yes	Yes
	Windows Media DRM for network devices	Yes	Yes
	Secure audio path	No	Yes
	Playlist burning	Yes	Yes
	Third-party trantrans support	Yes	No
	Local License Issuance	Yes	No
	Enhanced Windows Media DRM renewability	Yes	No

This article from http://www.cnitblog.com/vcommon/archive/2007/04/29/26384.html