Develop Reference

How to convert video files to H.264 in C#

I've searched without any luck about how this can be done in C#. What i'm trying to archieve is a program that accepts video files and converts them to H.264. Here is an example of a page where you can do this interactively:
http://www.ofoct.com/video-converter/convert-to-h-264-video.html
Question:
How can I in .NET create a program that can do something similar to whats being done from that homepage I shared? Any help or input is highly appreciated, thanks!
EDIT:
The reason i want to do this is because it seems like videos play in both iOS and Android devices when this is done, perhapps there is another way to make sure videos can play in both iOS and Android?
EDIT again:
Lets say i film a Video on a phone Android/iOS, now I'm using a ASP.NET web api that I'd like to convert theese movies to H.264 before storing in Azure, Is this possible? If so, any pointers on how?

There is a wrapper available http://www.ffmpeg-csharp.com/
The main point is that no one is going to write an encoder due to how slow it would be in .NET

Encoding/decoding are provided by the OS, through Direct Show (in the past) or Microsoft Media Foundation. For example, the Microsoft Media Foundation already contains a [H.264 Video Encoder](H.264 Video Encoder).
The SDK is appropriate for C++ and Microsoft hasn't released a wrapper. There are wrapper projects available though, eg. MF.Net, DirectShow.NET, WindowsMedia.NET although it doesn't have any activity since 2012.
There are also similar questions in StackOverflow, that propose other options, like using Microsoft's Encoder, although H.264 support is available only in the Pro version

The only plausable way would be to call out to an encoding application such as ffmpeg.

I'm not sure that this what you need but you can download a nuget called
NR.VideoConverter :> then you can write this code to convert the type of video
like from mp4 to mvo or anything I'm not sure what is h264 but I did find it when I wanted to change my videos so it could help y
var converter = new NReco.VideoConverter.FFMpegConverter();
converter.ConvertMedia(FilePath, FilePath, NReco.VideoConverter.Format.h264);

DirectShow .Net camera capture encode output?

recently i have started workin on project of my own which is capturing a camera output using DirectShow .Net. There are few problems that i don't know how ot solve
1) How can i encode the captured stream into H.264 format.I understand i should some how add filter in the filter graph. But i wasn't able to find where and how . Also i was not able to find if there is standart H.264 filter or should i download it form some where? If i need to download it can it just be a dll to wich i add reference or should it be installer?
2) Is there a way to save the captured output into a memory object, some kind of stream or it can only be written to file?
Best Regards,
Iordan

You're can use commercial software from VisioForge or Viscomsoft.
AForge potencial problem - no audio during capture, only video. Also output formats is a very limited. But - it's free and open source, if you're have any DirectShow experiense you can add audio support.

You will need to use something like FFMpeg or Handbrake. Check out http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/.
AForge also has some video editing abilities and you can also pass filters to it. There are also several FFMpeg C# wrappers you could use such as https://github.com/crazyender/FFMPEG.net
You should use AForge.net. All of the hard work is done for you already. Use VideoFileWriter http://www.aforgenet.com/framework/docs/html/4ee1742c-44d3-b250-d6aa-90cd2d606611.htm. I appears that the AForge framework uses FFMpeg under the hood as well (See AForge.Video.FFMPEG namespace). You just create a writer and pass it the bitmap/frame writer.WriteVideoFrame(bitmap);
You should fully investigate the video abstractions in AForge. You could save yourself considerable amounts of time.
Example: http://www.aforgenet.com/framework/samples/video.html

1) Yes, You should download encoder filter library. Most of decoders are supplied with free. But encoder is not. If you don't want to pay, you have to find open source Encoder.
And To use at the graphedit program, you should do dll register with that dll file. Or the installer program do this instead. And you also need to check container type like mp4, mkv... In other words you need mux filter to save that in a file. I think someone will link available urls. Sorry I don't have urls now.
2)What is that the means of capture? Is that Movie? or Image?
In case of Image, There are many sample projects and SampleGrabbers. You can save it to both of a file and memory.
In case of Movie, I'm sure your pc memory is not enougth to them with out encoding. Make memory stream and pass it to capture manager.
You can also make a filter in order to customize filter to your needs. All of information are included in Windows SDK samples.

How can I emulate a video capture device and provide dynamic video content?

I would like to emulate video input from a webcam for testing purposes.
So I need to be able to emulate a software video capture device in Windows and be able to dynamically generate its output.
How can I achieve this?
I would prefer a solution in C# or C++.

You can use a Virtual Webcam (old link, but there are others) it will take a video/images file and will display it in a webcam device. Your system will think that its a normal device.
Then you will need to create something that will generate the video/images, if you need static image then its pretty easy to generate a bmp.

Old (no selected answer) question.... actually probably one of the oldest I've ever seen... but I came across this looking for an answer myself, I remembered the day when "Virtual Webcam" still existed (now just a chinese ad site).
Fear not! There are new sources to solve your decade long quest:
First of all, checkout OBS, open source does a LOT with video streams:
https://obsproject.com/
Second, checkout this virtual webcam plugin for it. Does exactly what you're talking about, and does use #qbeuek's suggestion of DirectDraw:
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-virtualcam.949/
It is written in C++, so grabbing the bits you need and rewriting to C# is left as an exercise to the reader, but the capability is there.

As far as I know, there is a set of COM interfaces that govern the recording and playback of audio and video in Windows. It used to be called DirectShow, but maybe in the meantime the name has been changed. Those interfaces are used to construct a graph of audio and video filters, to encode / decode the data stream.
The way to go:
- read about the Microsoft DirectShow API,
- implement a COM object that implements the video source interface,

Streaming video library for C#

I'm looking at options for adding streaming video to a social web site written in ASP.NET/C#. I have a great deal of experience with Flash too, so I'm comfortable using FLV players, but I'd definitely go Silverlight if the right library is available.
The library would need to be able to encode user uploaded video in a web format.
I imagine playback will be Flash or Silverlight based.
It would need to create thumbnails of the video.
It would need to have server software for streaming the video or have some 3rd party way of doing so.
I don't mind paying a licensing fee for the software, so it does not have to be open source or free.
The license must allow use on a commercial web site.
The closest thing I have found is MediaSoft's offering. But I never heard of this company before starting my search and don't know anyone using their software. They seem to be using FFMPEG to perform encoding, which I heard can spawn legal issues for commercial web sites. Though I'm not very familiar with the licensing of FFMPEG myself so please correct me if I heard wrong.
Has anyone used MediaSoft? Any other video libraries that you have used that worked well? Did you just end up writing your own video encoding and serving library?

Not sure about Silverlight, but Flash will render both h.264 and FLV videos. FFMPEG can convert into both via liblame for FLV and x264 for h.264. It can also generate thumbnails.
It and the corresponding modules are licensed under the LGPL/GPL which means you can use FFMPEG to generate videos/thumbnails without restriction as long as you have the rights to the original movies that you're transcoding. The GPL/LGPL license restrictions only apply to the FFMPEG code/binaries which won't matter until you decide to distribute those binaries to other people.

In addition to the above answer, you can look at red5 as a streaming solution
http://osflash.org/red5

ASP.NET - how to read attributes (length, resolution, codec) of video files

I'm working on an ASP.NET app that allows users to upload video files. After the user uploads, I need to determine some of the attributes of the media - namely it's duration/length, resolution, and codec (if possible).
What's the simplest way to approach this? Should I use the WMP SDK - this seems to involve actually instantiating the media player on the server. Is there anything in the framework to do this, or do I need to rely on an external library?
I'm not concerned about displaying or streaming the video back to the user.

There is nothing in the framework, you will need some sort of library. The best I've seen (but it has been a year or so since I've looked) is taglib-sharp:
http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/TagLib_Sharp
The site seems to be down right now, but I see that it's been ported to fink (for OSX) only a couple of months ago, so I assume that is temporary.
oops, just saw that you're not the first to ask a question along these lines and I'm not the first to suggest taglib-sharp:
View/edit ID3 data for MP3 files
(note: it supports audio and video files).
hth