Writing Capture Filters

[The feature associated with this page, DirectShow, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine, and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation. Those features have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation instead of DirectShow, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

Writing an audio or video capture filter for DirectShow is not recommended. Instead, DirectShow provides automatic support for audio and video capture devices, using wrapper filters and the System Device Enumerator. For more information about implementing a device driver, refer to the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) documentation.

This section is intended only for developers who need to capture some kind of custom data from an unusual hardware device.

This article contains the following sections:

Writing DirectShow Filters