Media Foundation Architecture

This section describes the general design of Microsoft Media Foundation. For information about using Media Foundation for specific programming tasks, see Media Foundation Programming Guide.

In this section

Topic	Description
Overview of the Media Foundation Architecture	Gives a high-level overview of the Media Foundation architecture.
Media Foundation Primitives	Describes some basic interfaces that are used throughout Media Foundation. Almost all Media Foundation applications will use these interfaces.
Media Foundation Platform APIs	Describes core Media Foundation functions, such as asynchronous callbacks and work queues. Some applications might use platform-level interfaces. Also, custom plug-ins, such as media sources and MFTs, use these interfaces.
Media Foundation Pipeline	The Media Foundation pipeline layer consists of media sources, MFTs, and media sinks. Most applications do not call methods directly on the pipeline layer. Instead, applications use one of the higher layers, such as the Media Session or the Source Reader and Sink Writer.
Media Session	The Media Session manages data flow in the Media Foundation pipeline.
Source Reader	The Source Reader enables an application to get data from a media source, without the application needing to call the media source APIs directly. The Source Reader can also perform decoding of compressed streams.
Protected Media Path	The protected media path (PMP) provides a protected environment for playing premium video content. It is not necessary to use the PMP when writing a Media Foundation application.

 

Related topics

About Media Foundation

Media Foundation: Essential Concepts

Media Foundation and COM

Media Foundation Programming Guide