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I have searched hi and low but I have not found something that could point me to creating a windows application that grabs an rtsp stream (H.264) and flushes it to a virtual video device. I need this so that I can select that virtual video device instead of my connected cam in my flash application. Most of the posts in stackoverflow refer to already build apps, which is not really helpful eg. Convert RTSP stream to virtual web camera

I could use DirectShow on Windows 8 but found out that is being phased out on Windows 8 SDK ( I downloaded windows sdk but there were no directshow samples)

Also I found this article about directshow and filters but it seems that is not great help to me since it refers to old versions of windows. http://www.infognition.com/blog/2013/accessing_raw_video_in_directshow.html

So, how do you program DirectShow features/filter graphs on windows 8. I have looked into Windows Presentation Foundation but there are not a lot of samples, furthermore directshow seems to be much more straighforward.

why did Microsoft go this way anyway?

Community
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Nick_K
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Actually VMIX video mixing software will pull from just about any stream, diretx compatible video capture card (including the easy cap 9$ capture card on ebay) and then output to a directshow compatible virtual device, AND it can do it to two virtual devices at the same time..

AND the free version allows up to 4 inputs with flawless switching, there are pay versions that allow 1000 inputs. I currently am using it for it weekly broadcast capturing with 3 usb capture cards from camcorders componant outputs, mixed with a title overlay, outputs to a virtual device that microsoft expressions encoder then grabs transcodes down and send to windows media services server. At the same time VMIX records at 360p to an h.264 file, and streams to the local netowrk on port 80 AND creates another virtual device that is grabbed by another running copy of expressions encoder and sent to a another server in IIS smooth streaming format..

VMIX is a great FREE and inexpensive program from basic everything video to complex video mixes and file conversions..

Mitch Stein
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There is no suitable stock component in Windows, and DirectShow API in particular (because Microsoft has not been pushing it forward for years, or for another reason). You are on your own to fill in the missing pieces or use a third party solution.

Windows 8 still offer DirectShow API layer to power legacy applications and you can build a new application on top of it. There is no virtual video sources, however there are Ball and PushSource SDK samples (note that older SDKs were richer on samples), and then there is popular VCam sample that shows what it takes to turn a filter into a "registered" video source.

Then there is no support for RTSP clients, you are supposed to implement this part yourself as well.

Windows 8 offers decent H.264 encoder and decoder, and you also have options to use an alternate solution as well.

Roman R.
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  • Thanx for your answer. I tried your Ip camera solution but can only receive mjpeg streams at 15 frames/sec from my network camera. – Nick_K Feb 06 '15 at 07:45
  • Yes it often happens this way: cameras deliver "better" H.264 feed compared to their Motion JPEG, and typically via RTSP. H.264 over HTTP is uncommon. And my filter does Motion JPEG only, I never did RTSP source yet. – Roman R. Feb 06 '15 at 07:59