I know it is a long time since the last update on this blog, but hey, who cares? To get more for you to read here, I will start a series of posts about DirectShow, COM and GraphStudioNext! That’s what I know a lot about, so why not also write about it.
So lets start with my Open Source project GraphStudioNext. Thanks to Mike, the second “owner” of the project and Roman the Godfather of DirectShow (http://alax.info/blog/) we have implemented a lot of cool new features since the last official update *cough* a year ago *cough*. Here are some of my favorites I use in support and development to analyze DirectShow problems:
Show registered file and protocol handlers: that’s an absolute must have. If you try to render a file in DirectShow, the system looks for registered protocol-handlers and especially file-handlers. File-handlers for an extension are simple to find and fix. But if you have an old and buggy Haali Media Splitter registration, which is still there after you deinstalled it, that’s an challenge! With this new features you can also see the registered Byte-handlers for a file. Here you can see, that the filter is also registered for a byte pattern, or maybe nearly all byte pattern.
Different icon for 64bit version: because I work heavily in both worlds, 32bit and 64bit, I have pinned two GraphStudioNext’s in my Windows 7/8 Taskbar (also now possible with the coming release). And now I can see which version I need to start. The normal 32bit version or the version with the 64 in the Icon.
New file-extension .grfx for our XML-Filtergraphs: to easier open a saved filtergraph, we now use an own file-extension for it. Like Word/Excel 2003 we just added an ‘x’ to our GraphFile (.grf) implementation. The program registers itself for this extension with the current program location.
Start with RemoteGraph from DirectShowSpy: we now store the current location of the program-file in the registry. And GraphStudioNext can be started with the name of a RemoteGraph. So you can now open the program directly from the running graphs overview in DirectShowSpy. Here you can find Romans post about this feature.
(Un-)Register Filter without restart the program as Admin: that is something I needed for a long time. I always forgot to start the program as admin to change the merit of a filter or unregister the filter. Now this is no problem, because these actions are redirected to regsvr32.exe or reg.exe and you see their admin question.
Scan for CLSIDs in the DLL: for DirectShow filter-developers this is a nice little feature. In the last version it was already possible to load a filter from a file without registering it, but you needed to know the CLSID of the filter. Thanks to this new feature you can just scan the dll-file for all CLSIDs in it! Oh and by the way, you can scan nearly all COM-DLL-files. 😉
Change DbgLog settings and show Logfile: this is also a feature especially for DirectShow filter-developers like me. If you use the DirectShow BaseClasses for your logging, you can now change the logging settings directly from GraphStudioNext without the need to remember the registry location for it. And that’s not all, if you set a log-file as logging target, you can view this logfile directly in the program (in Filter-Properties-Dialog).
There are also a ton of other additions and fixes to the program, like AAC support for the PSI-Config-Filter or sizeable property pages, but that’s to much to list them all.
Stay on for more posts coming soon.
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