About Video Capture Devices

[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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine, and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation.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.]

Most new video capture devices use Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers. In the WDM architecture, Microsoft supplies a set of hardware-independent drivers, called class drivers, and the hardware vendor provides hardware-specific minidrivers. A minidriver implements any functions that are specific to the device; for most functions, the minidriver calls the Microsoft class driver.

In a DirectShow filter graph, any WDM capture device appears as the WDM Video Capture filter. The WDM Video Capture filter configures itself based on the characteristics of the driver. It appears under a name provided by the driver — you will not see a filter called "WDM Video Capture Filter" anywhere in the graph.

Some older capture devices still use Video for Windows (VFW) drivers. Although these drivers are now obsolete, they are supported in DirectShow through the VFW Capture filter.

Note

Windows allows users to grant or deny access to the device's camera in the Windows Settings app, under Privacy & Security -> Camera. When initializing the capture device, apps should check whether they have access to the camera and handle the case where access is denied by the user. For more information, see Handle the Windows camera privacy setting.

Related topics

About Video Capture in DirectShow