Original Post
Hello,
I've been trying to develop an application for Windows 7 for a few weeks now and I'm running into some walls concerning the lack of multimedia support within Windows 7.
I've tried a few different methods and got them working but the quality of product just isn't up to par of what I want. My main goal is to get video playing, and have the ability to place images over top of the video (preferably these images are .pngs for their alpha abilities).
The best method I've found so far is to use Media Foundation to play the videos. This method does not have the image support I need however. I've got my images over top of the video but the options are very restrictive. I'm using the SetAlphaBitmap function within the IMFVideoMixerBitmap interface. Going the route of the IDirect3DSurface9 interface, I've got multiple images overlaying the video, but the lack of transparency (only allowed to have one color transparent) causes the images to be restricted to very block-y images. It's just not the quality I'm looking for.
Also, trying to display two images over each other causes the bottom images to be blocked in sections where the top images needs to be transparent. I'm using Direct3D 9 surfaces to draw the images over top and I've just started looking into the SetRenderState to try and blend the two images together which I hope will help in the long run, but I haven't had much success with that yet either.
Overall, my main concern is that at this point in time I'm baffled that there isn't more support for multimedia. Is it something I'm missing in the Windows SDK or DirectX? Additionally, are there any commercial products I could consider that do a good job of this and totally take it to a higher level rather than dealing with the lower level of DirectX and Windows SDK?
Any help would be appreciated, and if there is any need of clarification feel free to ask.
Thanks.
I've been trying to develop an application for Windows 7 for a few weeks now and I'm running into some walls concerning the lack of multimedia support within Windows 7.
I've tried a few different methods and got them working but the quality of product just isn't up to par of what I want. My main goal is to get video playing, and have the ability to place images over top of the video (preferably these images are .pngs for their alpha abilities).
The best method I've found so far is to use Media Foundation to play the videos. This method does not have the image support I need however. I've got my images over top of the video but the options are very restrictive. I'm using the SetAlphaBitmap function within the IMFVideoMixerBitmap interface. Going the route of the IDirect3DSurface9 interface, I've got multiple images overlaying the video, but the lack of transparency (only allowed to have one color transparent) causes the images to be restricted to very block-y images. It's just not the quality I'm looking for.
Also, trying to display two images over each other causes the bottom images to be blocked in sections where the top images needs to be transparent. I'm using Direct3D 9 surfaces to draw the images over top and I've just started looking into the SetRenderState to try and blend the two images together which I hope will help in the long run, but I haven't had much success with that yet either.
Overall, my main concern is that at this point in time I'm baffled that there isn't more support for multimedia. Is it something I'm missing in the Windows SDK or DirectX? Additionally, are there any commercial products I could consider that do a good job of this and totally take it to a higher level rather than dealing with the lower level of DirectX and Windows SDK?
Any help would be appreciated, and if there is any need of clarification feel free to ask.
Thanks.