Signal Format
[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 It has been superseded by MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine, and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation.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.]
A DV camcorder's signal format can be NTSC or PAL, standard or long-play.
MSDV Driver
To get the input signal format from the MSDV driver, call the IAMExtTransport::GetTransportBasicParameters method and pass in the ED_TRANSBASIC_INPUT_SIGNAL flag. The method returns a defined constant, indicating the format.
The following code checks the signal format, and uses this value to calculates the average time per frame. The variable Mode receives the signal-format constant.
LONG Mode, AvgTimePerFrame;
hr = MyDevCap.pTransport->GetTransportBasicParameters(
ED_TRANSBASIC_INPUT_SIGNAL, &Mode, NULL);
if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
{
switch (Mode)
{
case ED_TRANSBASIC_SIGNAL_525_60_SD: // NTSC SD
AvgTimePerFrame = 33; // 33 msec (29.97 FPS)
break;
case ED_TRANSBASIC_SIGNAL_525_60_SDL: // NTSC SDL
AvgTimePerFrame = 33;
break;
case ED_TRANSBASIC_SIGNAL_625_50_SD: // PAL SD
AvgTimePerFrame = 40; // 40 msec (25 FPS)
break;
case ED_TRANSBASIC_SIGNAL_625_50_SDL: // PAL SDL
AvgTimePerFrame = 40;
break;
default:
// Unknown type
AvgTimePerFrame = 33; // Default
break;
}
}
To get the output signal format, call the same method with the ED_TRANSBASIC_OUTPUT_SIGNAL flag.
UVC Driver
To get the input or output signal format from the UVC driver, call IAMStreamConfig::GetFormat on the pin and examine the video format block. (For UVC devices, the code shown in the previous example usually returns ED_TRANSBASIC_SIGNAL_UNKNOWN, so it is not reliable.)
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