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Microsoft DirectVideo?

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First post, by BlackDoomer

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I'm still researching the design of the graphics stack under Windows and the history of its development. And recently, while trying to create a comprehensive list of technologies that have ever been part of DirectX, I came across references to a strange thing called DirectVideo that I had never heard of before (not to be confused with DirectDraw and DirectShow).

I first found it on a driver disс for Matrox Millennium II/Mystique 220: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1460&menustate=0
The readme.txt in its root tells us the following:

Run-time libraries
<...>
Path       Product
~~~~      ~~~~~~~
\directx3  Microsoft DirectX 3.0a redistributable code
\directv   Microsoft DirectVideo redistributable code
\VfW       Microsoft Video for Windows 1.1e run-time

- DirectX and DirectVideo are automatically installed by the 
main CD-ROM install program. This software is for Windows 95 only.

- Video for Windows 1.1e is for Windows 3.1 only. It speeds up 
the playback of AVI video files. To install, start the "vfw\setup.exe"
program.

Note that this is almost certainly a thing that is somehow related to DirectX and at the same time is not just some kind of now forgotten intermediate name for VfW or DirectShow.
There is also mga95.ini, which states:

DirectX=Run-time library for DirectDraw/Direct3D programs
DirectVideo=Run-time library for faster AVI video file playback

And finally, there is a separate readme.txt in the Win95 folder, which says:

Notes, Problems, and Limitations
<...>
- DirectDraw, Direct3D and DirectVideo support
<...>
  We provide DirectX 2 on the Matrox CD-ROM. The latest DirectX is
  available from the Microsoft Web site, and is included with many 
  DirectX programs.
<...>
  Note that depending on the origin of your Microsoft DirectX software, 
  it may not include DirectVideo support. For faster playback of Indeo 
  and Cinepak AVI files, you should install Microsoft DirectVideo 
  support.

Other reliable references I could find were an old article Q178123 from Microsoft KnowledgeBase and manuals for the ASUS V264 series of video cards (example).
So now I wonder what was its purpose. Given the mentions of Indeo and Cinepak, my best guess at this point is that it's just a stump left over from DCI after the hardware surface handling part was split off into the "brand new" DirectDraw.

my English is broken beyond any repair, and I'm really sorry for that.

Reply 1 of 3, by the3dfxdude

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I kind of feel like this DirectVideo was a working name for what ended up called DirectShow formally when ActiveMovie was rolled into DirectX after it grew in scope of multiple codecs.

Notice here
https://news.microsoft.com/1996/03/05/microso … f9OLggDr640z.97
That Encarta was mentioned as the user of ActiveMovie, then correlate that to the KB article troubleshooting why DirectVideo does not work that is needed for Encarta. These are all connected to the same thing then.

Reply 2 of 3, by BlackDoomer

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the3dfxdude wrote on 2024-10-03, 04:23:

I kind of feel like this DirectVideo was a working name for what ended up called DirectShow formally when ActiveMovie was rolled into DirectX after it grew in scope of multiple codecs.

Well, I came to the same conclusion at first; moreover, in old glossaries these two technologies are often described together side-by-side. Like here, for example:

  • DirectShow: audio, video, streaming media
  • DirectVideo: video (earlier API)

But then I managed to find the official user manual for the Matrox Rainbow Runner - an expansion board for the Matrox Millennium II and Matrox Mystique 220 video cards mentioned above - where both technologies were mentioned literally in opposition to each other:

Problem: Video file playback is jerky (skipping frames)
Cause: If the problem is specific to Matrox MJPEG video files, Microsoft DirectVideo may be enabled. Matrox MJPEG uses DirectShow, not DirectVideo.

There can be no mistake here, because an earlier version of this manual is still available on the official Matrox website (link 1, link 2), where the same text is present, but DirectShow is mentioned under its previous name ActiveMovie.

But I was still lucky enough to find the truth: Q147658 - You Can Improve Video Playback by Using DirectVideo.
This page answers my question completely. I have no clue why Google doesn't show it for the exact query "directvideo", but Yandex does.
Along with this, I also found this summary with statements that shed some light on the purpose of DirectVideo:

Microsoft Active Movie […]
Show full quote

Microsoft Active Movie

  • New video interface, competitive with QuickTime.
  • Part of the DirectX architecture. Possibly also known as DirectVideo? No -- DirectVideo is the name for Video for Windows on top of DirectX.
  • The successor to Video for Windows.

And finally, I found Alex St. John's first-person stories on YouTube, where he talks about DirectVideo:

Last edited by BlackDoomer on 2025-01-18, 21:09. Edited 3 times in total.

my English is broken beyond any repair, and I'm really sorry for that.

Reply 3 of 3, by the3dfxdude

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So it's basically a middle layer driver re-architecting, pretty much transparent to us, and usable when you had Win95 and DirectX, and got the graphics vendor update their drivers. The way Alex St John speaks about really speaks to me as it's more than just replacing VFW, that ActiveMovie/DirectShow came to be was just another consequence of needing to fix and port media playing over to DirectDraw too, because they could, and they already solved the problem of good video/sound in DX. Not sure where I had seen DirectVideo when diving into DirectX a while back, but maybe it's in the DDK?

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