DirectShow was launched in 1996 and was originally intended to provide MPEG-1 file playback support for Microsoft's Windows operating system. Windows 98 DirectShow became the standard component for data streaming on the Windows operating system, it was also intended as a replacement for earlier media processing frame works such as Video for Windows.

The architecture of DirectShow divides the processing of multimedia tasks into a series of steps known as filters. Each filter represents a stage in the processing of the data;

• Source filters (i.e. MPEG files, Euresys frame grabbers, Basler cameras)
• Transformation filters (ie splitters, YUV to RGB converters, multiplexers)
• Render filters (i.e. display)

Each filter has a number of input and output pins. These can be connected in many different ways to build a variety of filters for different tasks. It also means developers can add customer filters or other filters at any stage of the graph. This flexible development and ease of use is particularly appealing to machine vision suppliers and integrators.

The advantage of DirectShow is that the data streams are handled in a high level manner instead of having to access the bits and bytes directly. Therefore any application that manipulates the data streams in order to change properties such as image formats, colour, or displays and stores image streams can benefit greatly from DirectShow. In addition to some traditional machine vision applications, areas that might find DirectShow an advantage are intelligent security and video surveillance.

For demanding image processing applications or critical timing scenarios we still recommend C++ development.