<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Plagiarized version of MSDN
Review: I agree with many other readers. This book merely lists all the interfaces and functions and a brief description of what they do. All the sample code is straight from the Directx SDK...Someone correctly said that this is just the MSDN with an index and on paperback. We really need a "good" book on DirectX programming. Especially concepts like Audio capturing in conjunction with WDM architecture etc...
Rating: 
Summary: .NET chapter is very weak
Review: In general I found this book helpful for C++ 6.0 programmers. The concepts are covered in appropriate detail and it is well organized. Unfortunately, I am using C++ 7.0 and Visual Studio 7.0 (.NET) and the code samples are not an exact match. Chapter 13 is about DirectShow and .Net but the examples are cumbersome and you have to walkthru each of them in turn rather than being able to jump to the particular topic in which you are interested. The most anoying thing, however, is that the zip file of code examples (available on the publishers website), does not include the samples from chapter 13!
Rating:
Summary: .NET chapter is very weak
Review: In general I found this book helpful for C++ 6.0 programmers. The concepts are covered in appropriate detail and it is well organized. Unfortunately, I am using C++ 7.0 and Visual Studio 7.0 (.NET) and the code samples are not an exact match. Chapter 13 is about DirectShow and .Net but the examples are cumbersome and you have to walkthru each of them in turn rather than being able to jump to the particular topic in which you are interested. The most anoying thing, however, is that the zip file of code examples (available on the publishers website), does not include the samples from chapter 13!
Rating: 
Summary: good DirectShow coverage
Review: The book gives really good coverage of DirectShow. It includes the following topics: playback
compression
capture
Programming DirectShow with .NET
Windows Media Format
Windows Media Player
Filters The playback and capture sections are excellent and will get you going in creating playback and capture applications in no time. The book concentrates on Playback and Compression which is what most people out there will be interested in. Appropriately, it only introduces the fundamentals of filter structure and step-by-step programming which will be needed by the comparatively few people who are writing custom multimedia components and have a solid knowledge of media formats etc. If you would like to include multimedia into your application and have a solid knowledge of COM programming this book should be easy to understand. Otherwise a COM primer would be a pre-requisite
Rating: 
Summary: If only there was another....
Review: This book is rather obviously just a rewrite of the MS documentation, which (in general) is not a compliment. The example code in the book is probably it's only saving grace, but even then it is only sparsely commented. The comments generally only describe what is happening, and not why. While downloading the code from the internet is a valid way to distribute the sample code, it's just one more step I have to do, and a companion CD would have been a good bonus. In general, I'd say save your money and use the MSDN docs.
Rating:
Summary: One of the worst books I ever read
Review: This book is simply a rehash of that which is contained in MSDN.
The information is organized a little better than what is found in MSDN. However, there is little to no detail given on most of the material covered. Furthermore, the examples are nothing more than code snippets, most of which are very difficult to even compile and execute.
I think that a good book should contain examples that can be compiled and executed without much difficulty. The author really needed to add a lot more detail about the directshow architecture and especially the APIs which he seems to references without explanation.
In summary, this book makes light reading out of a subject which is not meant to be "glazed over". Because of that, I would STRONGLY recommend against buying this book.
Rating:
Summary: Paradoxically it is both after and before its time
Review: This text is really two part-books. The first part, chapters one to twelve, deal with DirectShow, COM and friends. While chaptes 13 to 14 address DirectShow and .NET. The first part is almost out of date, since .NET architecture has served a notice-to-quit on COM, infavour of CLR. While the second part is premature, as MS haven't delivered on the intergration of DirectX in .NET. This anomaly is not the fault of the author, but of the technology transition we are experiencing at present. It is a real pity. For instance in the first part we have reference to ASF formats. Now no one outside of MS has even the slightest interest in ASF, and MS largely has fogottent it in the past year. The fact that so little of DirectX is actually available to .NET developers is moot point emphasised by the author. Whether you buy this book of not, may largely be determined by the PC in front of you. If you are happy with 2000 and Visual Studio 6, then buy it. However, if you are catching up with .NET and really don't want to wrestle with portability, then you might be better collecting material from MSDN and various newsgroups. Moreover,the book doesn't come with a CD which is reprimandable oversight these days. The fact of the matter however, is that there are very very few books addressing the DirectX family. The author has made a good effort to pull together useful and almost arcane information. My only further observation, is that a bit more discussion of code design would have been useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much cut and paste from the MSDN.
Review: Too much cut and paste from the MSDN, I could have done that.
However, it does give you a place to start.
Rating:
Summary: A good way to get started with DirectShow
Review: While it's true that most of the information can be found in MSDN, this book provides a structure that is sorely lacking from the DirectShow information (and most everything else) found in MSDN. I also found the "code snippets" to be far more useful than the usual sample code that is so full of the junk needed to make it compile that you can't see what is being demonstrated. Apparently not everyone agrees, but I found the snippets to be right on point and to focus solely on the subject of the discussion, not (once again!) showing me how to set up a dialog.
<< 1 >>
| 
