Thoughts on directshow

In this post, I'll summarize some features that make directshow stand out, from a developer's point of view.

The architecture of directshow is:

The core of directshow framework is the box in the center.

1. separation of concerns
Directshow divides a complex media rendering task into a bunch of smaller tasks, organized as different filters. Each filter has its own concentration, e.g., grabbing data from source media file, decoding data, rendering the data on display. It's more natural and easier for our brain to resolve complex problems in smaller steps, one by one. Another benefit of this breakdown structure is we can perform unit test on smaller component more easily.

2. mature abstraction layer
Directshow provides a mature abstraction layer on top of sub-tasks' concrete implementations ( Adapter pattern). The existence of the abstraction layer makes our project easier to manage. The cost for dealing with changes can be minimized. For example, we can have one guy tries to implement a hardware based decoder filter. And before his filter is available, other guys in charge of other parts can use a software based decoder filter instead. After the hardware based filter is done, it's hopeful to replace the software based filter without requiring changes on other parts because interfaces of both filters are the same.

3. built-in multimedia functions
Besides being a sophisticated core framework, directshow also contains a lot of commonly used multimedia features like common media type decoders, some splitters, and multi-stream synchronizer. With these features built-in, we developers' life will be a lot easier.

References
MSDN: Directshow System Overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectShow