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AM acronym meaning in directshow

What is the meaning of directshow ubiquitous AM acronym ?

Examples

  • The COM interface IAMStreamConfig (MSDN)
  • The AM_MEDIA_TYPE structure (MSDN)
Solution

  • AM stands for ActiveMovie, one of the previous names for the technology.

    DirectShow was known internally as Quartz during its development. The first release was ActiveMovie 1.0, released in July 1996. This provided an ActiveX control for media playback that supported playback of MPEG 1,AVI and QuickTime videos as well as audio files. There is an SDK that provides tools and information for developing filters and applications.

    However, for the second release a year later, Microsoft renamed it to DirectShow to provide a more consistent naming scheme along with a re-organisation of the DirectX, ActiveAnimation and ActiveMovie development groups...

    If you happen to render a video-enabled media file in GraphEdit SDK tool, the popup window holding video feed still has a title "ActiveMovie Window".