EDIT: I changed my question to better clarify the issue.
How is it possible to play a video from a byte array (taken from embedded resource) using DirectShow.Net library?
Since I'm going to prevent users from accessing the video file, I need to embed the video file as resource and play it.
Thanks in advance.
It's a bit non-standard, but you could use something like WCF to self-host an endpoint inside your desktop application. Then set the source of the video input to be the "URL" to your self-hosted endpoint. That would work for WPF or WinForms. Not sure about Silverlight though.
The self-hosted endpoint could pull the media from your embedded resources and stream it from there.
It sounds to me like the problem is not so much how to use the DirectShow library (the `DirectShow.Net Forum is specifically designed for that), but rather how to use an embedded resource.
I ran into something similar a few years back on a contract job where an employer was worried that some customer might steal his proprietary information. My information was in hundreds of PDF documents, but the idea works the same for video files.
Here's how I tackled the problem:
First, place the video file in your list of resources: I use Visual Studio, so I go to the Project's Properties, click the Resources tab, select the Files option, then select Add Resource > Add Existing File...
Add the following two namespaces to the code file you will be using:
using System.IO;
using System.Diagnostics;
Finally, where you want to play your video file, just do something similar to the following:
Process player = null;
string tempFile = "~clip000.dat";
try {
File.WriteAllBytes(tempFile, Properties.Resources.MyMovie_AVI);
player = Process.Start(tempFile);
player.WaitForExit();
} finally {
File.Delete(tempFile);
}
Most likely, you will not be calling the Process.Start method, but rather the appropriate DirectShow method. The idea is still the same: Extract your resources as a byte array, write them to a new, temporary file, use the file, then delete that file whenever you are done.
Be sure to put the Delete statement in the finally block so that if any errors occur or your user closes the program while the file is still playing, your application still cleans up the old file.
EDIT:
I think this might be a viable way of doing this:
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(Properties.Resources.MyMovie_AVI)) {
// Now you have to find a way in `DirectShow` to use a Stream
}
Can you use a different library?
I used the WPF MediaKit to do some non-standard streaming of a secure, live h264 video stream. The developer (Jermiah Morill) was very responsive, and the customization I could perform was extensive (since you get the source).
At that point, you could embed the video as an embedded resource, load the byte array (perhaps either part of it at a time or the entire file) into memory, and play from memory.
Related
For my wpf application i need to play video files saved in a MemoryStream. Is it possibile to achieve this by using WPF-mediakit?
Since MediaElement does not support playing a video directly from memory I have been using the vlc.dotnet library to achieve this. However I am looking for an alternative. I have found some posts that say WPF-Mediakit can play videos from a MemoryStream, but i was unable to find the described functionality in the source code or documentation.
If anyone could point me in the right direction towards playing video saved in memory in WPF-Mediakit, that would be great.
No, WPF-MediaKit cannot play video from memory stream. Just save it to a temporary file (e.g. use System.IO.Path.GetTempFileName()) and play the video from file.
WPF-MediaKit uses DirectShowLib, which is just a wrapper around MS Windows DirectShow interface. And that is unmanaged code. So:
You cannot use C# MemoryStream, i.e. managed memory, for an unmanaged code. You have to use unmanaged memory.
DirectShow is based on filters. AFAIK it has no input filter, which can play from memory. But you can code one, e.g. see https://stackoverflow.com/a/24478030/254109
Note: You may also some FFmpeg based solutions, see https://github.com/Sascha-L/WPF-MediaKit/wiki/Similar-Projects e.g. FFME.
I am trying to make an app that make use of open data.
The data I try to read out is in a CSV format (and is about 40mb big).
I have 2 problems I can't solve.
First I having difficulties to read the file from the web.
I already read on MSDN how to read files asynchrome but it's all about local files. I want to make a list of objects. Each line (except the first line) contains all props for 1 object
Secondly when I finally managed to read the file, is there a way to save it's data and read it somehow the next time? Because 40mb is pretty big to re-download each time you open the app and it takes a lot of time.
I was wondering if it is possible that when I read the the file on the web again, it will only read and at the new lines.
I am a newbie in UWP (c#) applications, so my apologies for the questions.
Thanks in advance.
There are two APIs you can use to download a file. One is HttpClient, described here on MSDN Documentation and in a UWP sample here. This class is usually recommended for smaller files and smaller data, but can easily handler larger files as well. Its disadvantage is, that when the user closes the app, the file will stop downloading.
The alternative is BackgroundDownloader, again here on MSDN and here in UWP samples. This class is usually recommended for downloading larger files and data, as it automatically perfroms the download in the background so the download will continue even when the app is closed.
To store your files, you can use the ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder. This is a special folder provided to you by the system for storage of application files. You have read/write access to this folder and you can not only store your files here, but even create subfolder structure using UWP StorageFile and StorageFolder APIs. More about this is on MSDN.
I'm working in c#, and looking for a way to create a path to a directory that will map to an IO.Stream instead of to the actual file system.
I want to be able to "save" files to that path, manipulate the content or file names, and then save them from that path to a regular file in the file system.
I know I can use a temporary file, but I would rather use the memory for both security and performance.
This kind of thing exists, according to this answer, in Java, using the FileSystemProvider class. I'm looking for a way to do it in c#.
I've tried every search I could think of and came up only with the java answer and suggestions to use Temporary files.
Is it even possible using .net?
Basically, I'm looking for a way to enable saving files directly to memory as if they where saved into the file system.
so, for instance, if I had a 3rd party class that exposes a save method (save(string fullPath)), or something like the SmtpServer.Send(MyMsg) in this question, i could choose that path and save it into the memory stream instead of onto the drive. (the main thing here is that I want to provide a path that will lead directly to a memory stream).
.NET doesn't have an abstraction layer over the host OS's file system. So unless you can build your own for use in custom code, and you need to have 3rd party libraries covered, there are just two workable optilns:
Use streams and avoid any APIs working with file names.
Build a virtual file system plugged into your host OS's storage architecture; however, the effort needed versus benefits is highly questionable.
I went through a similar situation lately, and there is no out of the box solution in .NET for doing that although I used a workaround which was efficient and safe for me.
Using Ionic.Zip Nuget package you can create a whole directory with a complex structure as a stream in memory and although it will be created as a zip file, you can extract it as a stream or even send the zip file as a stream.
using (var zip = new Ionic.Zip.ZipFile())
{
zip.AddEntry($"file1.json", new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(someJsonContent)));
for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
{
zip.AddEntry($"{myDir}/{i}.json", new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(anotherJsonContent)));
}
}
And here is how to extract a zip file as a stream using Ionic.Zip
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.
Just curious to see if this is possible. I have a windows application that reads all the bytes from a .avi file situated on my pc and then stores it in a byte[]. So now I have the avi file in memory, and I want to load it into some sort of a video player control, directly from memory. I've tried using the wmplayer control, apparently this is not possible. I've read suggestion about using the DirectShow and VLC plugins, but I have no idea where to even start using those two and I haven't seen any sample code of this being down. Anybody have any ideas to elaborate on the mentioned plugins, or have a different approach to it?
For DirectShow, an in-memory source filter may be required. I am not aware of such a filter being available, but one can be based on Async Filter Sample from DirectShow samples. This is in C++ though.
For .NET, DirectShow.NET library can be used. A sample GSSF filter there may be a good start for an in-memory source filter implementation. This library also provides COM Interop for DirectShow that could be used to build a test player application that instantiates this filter.