DirectX Media is a set of multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

-related APIs for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 complementing DirectX

DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...

. It included DirectAnimation for 2D/3D web animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

, DirectShow

DirectShow

DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...

 for multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 playback and streaming media

Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

, DirectX Transform for web interactivity, and Direct3D

Direct3D

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...

 Retained Mode for higher level 3D graphics. DirectShow additionally contained DirectX plugin

DirectX plugin

In computer music and professional audio creation, a DirectX plugin is a software processing component that can be loaded as a plugin into host applications to allow real-time processing, audio effects, mixing audio or act as virtual synthesizers...

s for audio signal processing

Audio signal processing

Audio signal processing, sometimes referred to as audio processing, is the intentional alteration of auditory signals, or sound. As audio signals may be electronically represented in either digital or analog format, signal processing may occur in either domain...

 and DirectX Video Acceleration

DXVA

DirectX Video Acceleration is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion compensation and deinterlacing to be offloaded to the GPU...

 for accelerated video playback.

DirectX Media runtime

Run-time system

A run-time system is a software component designed to support the execution of computer programs written in some computer language...

 components were distributed as part of Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

. DirectX Media SDK and DirectX SDK existed as two separate SDKs until DirectX 6.0. Later on, Microsoft deprecated DirectX Media and integrated DirectShow, the key part of DirectX Media, into DirectX. As of April 2005, DirectShow was removed from DirectX and moved to the Microsoft Platform SDK

Microsoft Platform SDK

Microsoft Windows SDK, Platform SDK, and .NET Framework SDK are software development kits from Microsoft that contain header files, libraries, samples, documentation and tools required to develop applications for Microsoft Windows and .NET Framework....

 instead. DirectX is, however, still required to build the DirectShow samples. DirectShow and its components are to be gradually deprecated in favor of the newer Media Foundation

Media Foundation

Microsoft Media Foundation is a COM-based multimedia framework pipeline and infrastructure platform for digital media in Windows Vista, Windows 7 & Windows 8...

.

External links

• DirectAnimation (MSDN)
• DirectX Transform (MSDN)