Building the Filter Graph

[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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine, and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation.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.]

The article The Filter Graph and Its Components describes the basic building blocks of a DirectShow filter graph. This section examines how these building blocks are created and connected together so that they can begin to process data. This section contains the following topics:

About DirectShow