This book has been written for the complete DirectShow novice; you don’t need to know anything about DirectShow—or even audio or video—to get started. If you’re already familiar with DirectShow, chances are you’ll be able to race through the first three chapters of this book very quickly. However, it’s always a good idea to review the pages, just to see if there’s anything covered that you might not be familiar with.

Although DirectShow is very useful, the documentation included with the DirectX Software Development Kit (SDK) is quite technical, designed for the advanced user of DirectShow, rather than the rank novice. Therefore, I spent more time puzzling my way through the documentation than I did writing code. I realized that the perfect complement to the Microsoft documentation would be a book that could lead a programmer into DirectShow step-by-step, with useful examples presented as a “cookbook” of different techniques. So, here it is, Programming Microsoft DirectShow for Digital Video and Television. (I guess Microsoft Press thought it was a good idea, too.)