DirectShow: problem calling IGraphBuilder->RenderFile ...

[Russ B]

I am having some trouble with DirectX 8.1 / DirectShow...

I am having problems calling IGraphBuilder->RenderFile.

If I call it with a Filter Graph File (a ".GRF" file that was created with
the FilterGraph Editor) as the source file, I get an error ("Cannot play
back the file. The format is not supported."). If I call it with a WMV
(Windows Media Video) file, it seems to work OK. The GRF file does load up
and "play" OK with the Filter Graph Editor.

I'm not sure what's up??? This call used to work fine!!! (I think the last
time I tried this was with DirectX 8.0 though. I am now using DirectX 8.1.)
Also, the ability to do this documented in the DirectX SDK help file.

Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong??? If so... please help!

[Joseph Koch-Schulte]

hi russ,
I have had the same problem with this call. It is in
the documentation that it should work and I don't know why
it doesn't. In the sdk documentation there is another
explanation of how to do this... the manual way. I
followed the steps and it worked for me. From the docs:

1. Open the storage file (by using StgOpenStorage).
2. Query the filter graph manager for IPersistStream.
3. Open the L"ActiveMovieGraph" stream (by using
IStorage::OpenStream).
4. Pass the stream to the filter graph (by using
IPersistStream::Load).

I hope this helps. I had to hack a bit to get it to work,
feel free to ask if you have any questiosn. By the way...
I have a related problem of my own that I am going to post
to this group. It sounds like you have some experience,
take a look, maybe you can answer my question as well

gook luck

joe

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[Russ B.]

Hi Joe -

Thanks for the help. What you describe looks promissing.
Where did you see this documented??? I would like to try
this, but I am not sure I understand what you are
describing.

I have done some experimenting/research on this bug, and
it seems to be limited to the combination of Windows 2000
and DirectX 8.1. It did not show up on a Windows 2000
system until I upgraded from DirectX 8.0a to 8.1, and it
does not happen with my Windows XP system (I am
pretty sure that XP ships with DirectX 8.1).

I hope a "bug fix" is in progress ???

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