Designing Video Capture Boards for Use with the Microsoft ActiveX Video Control
DownloadDesigning Video Capture Boards for Media Center PC
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This document is for hardware vendors who are building video capture and encoding subsystems for use in computers running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition. It describes the requirements of these subsystems, recommends ways to enhance their performance, and explains how to debug them. By following the guidelines in this document, video capture and encoding subsystem designers can create products that are fully compatible with Media Center and provide a feature-rich experience for the user.
The Microsoft Video Control (MSVidCtl) object is a Microsoft ActiveX control that connects Microsoft DirectShow filters for use in capturing, recording, and playing video. It is the main component that Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition uses to build filter graphs for recording and playing television video.
This document describes how to design video capture hardware and device driver software that MSVidCtl (and hence Media Center) can use. It also describes how to solve problems that occur when MSVidCtl does not use the video capture hardware correctly, resulting in incompatibilities between the capture hardware, the device drivers, and MSVidCtl.
Microsoft encourages hardware vendors to differentiate their product line of computers shipping with Windows XP Media Center Edition by following the instructions found in the OEM Preinstallation Kit as well as the recommendations in this document.
This information applies for the following operating systems:
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
Included in this white paper:
| • | Overview of MSVidCtl |
| • | Medium GUIDs |
| • | Analog TV Tuner/Capture/Compressor Subsystem Filters |
| • | TV Tuner Filter |
| • | Debugging Video Capture Boards |
| • | Appendix A: SuperViewTV |
| • | Appendix B: Ratings DLL |
| • | Appendix C: ACMS |
| • | Appendix D: Excerpts from the Media Center Addendum |
