IFilterChain interface (strmif.h)

[The feature associated with this page, DirectShow, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine, and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation. Those features have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation instead of DirectShow, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

The IFilterChain interface provides methods for starting, stopping, or removing chains of filters in a filter graph. The filter graph manager exposes this interface.

A filter chain is a sequence of filters, each with at most one connected input pin and one connected output pin, that forms an unbroken line of filters. A filter chain is defined by the filter at the start of the chain and the filter at the end of the chain. (These can be the same filter, making a chain of one filter.) By definition, there is a single stream path going from the start of the chain downstream to the end of the chain.

The methods on this interface are useful in situations where an entire stream of data can appear or disappear, such as a video conferencing application that receives multiple streams over a network. For more information, see Dynamic Graph Building. To control individual streams on a capture filter, use the IAMStreamControl interface instead.

Inheritance

The IFilterChain interface inherits from the IUnknown interface. IFilterChain also has these types of members:

Methods

The IFilterChain interface has these methods.

IFilterChain::PauseChain The PauseChain method switches all the filters in a filter chain into a paused state.
IFilterChain::RemoveChain The RemoveChain method removes every filter in a filter chain from the filter graph.
IFilterChain::StartChain The StartChain method switches all the filters in a filter chain into a running state.
IFilterChain::StopChain The StopChain method switches all the filters in a filter chain into a stopped state.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	strmif.h (include Dshow.h)