DSCmd - a little DirectShow-based command-line media player for Windows

[fluxus]

Hi,

this is my first post here, so sorry if I unintentionally violate the netiquette. I just want to announce a little application I created, in case anyone here has a need for it.

Since I'm too lazy to describe it again, below what I posted on some mailing list about it.

<blockquote>

In the last few days I created a little command-line media player called
"DScmd", based on DirectShow. You can download its first release from here:
https://valentin.dasdeck.com/c/dscmd/

The command-line arguments it currently supports are listed here:
https://valentin.dasdeck.com/c/dscmd/readme.txt

AFAICT there was no such purely DirectShow-based command-line player
yet, which is why I created it. There is e.g. ffplay.exe (which comes
with FFmpeg) which also supports DirectShow, but it has (statically
compiled) 40-60 MB, whereas my dscmd.exe only has 192 kB, since it
doesn't contain any media format/codec parsing code (like libavcodec for
ffmepg/ffplay) at all, but instead only relies on the DirectShow system.
And it also doesn't rely on SDL, but instead uses native Win-API windows
for displaying video in a window.

But it's nevertheless quite powerful, here a couple of features as
unsorted list:

- it allows to build arbitrary DirectShow graphs explicitely

- it allows to load DirectShow filters at runtime, so no registration
(which would require elevated privileges) needed.

- it supports VMR-7, WMR-9 and EVR video renderers (others, like
legacy renderer or Haali only work partially)

- using the LAV (or alternatively FFdshow) filters, it provides the
power of libavcodec etc., so about the same (long) list of supported
container formats and media codecs as ffplay/ffmpeg.

- SHOUTcast/Icecast audio and HLS video streaming support (via LAV
Splitter Source)

- Video/audio capturing support (playback or recording e.g. to AVI)

- interactive keyboard control (optional, via "-i")


Check out/run the demo batch scripts in folder "demos". Most of them
should run in any recent Windows (e.g. Win 8.x/Win 10.x, 32/64-bit).
Only 3 of them - demo_file_video.bat, demo_file_fullscreen.bat and
demo_url_video.bat - are meant to demonstrate direct video playback
without creating an explicit filter graph, and therefor rely on
appropriate filters registered in the system. If those 3 demos don't
work for you, you can execute "__register_run_as_admin.bat" in folder
"demos/filters" - by running it as admin, as the name suggests - to
register the provided LAV filters, then also those should work.

Final note: in interactive mode (-i), you can switch (toggle) any loaded
video to fullscreen by typing "f" after the video was loaded. But the
commandline argument "-fullscreen" is meant for situations when only
strict fullscreen playback is required and never the desktop should be
shown. Therefor this mode doesn't allow to switch back to non-fullscreen
mode, and therefor also not to quit the player by closing the video
window via close button in its title bar. To quit a player running in
this explicit fullscreen mode, in interactive mode just type "q" or ESC,
otherwise shortcut Alt-F4 always works.

</blockquote>

[Milardo]

Hi,

this is my first post here, so sorry if I unintentionally violate the netiquette. I just want to announce a little application I created, in case anyone here has a need for it.

Since I'm too lazy to describe it again, below what I posted on some mailing list about it.

<blockquote>

In the last few days I created a little command-line media player called
"DScmd", based on DirectShow. You can download its first release from here:
https://valentin.dasdeck.com/c/dscmd/

The command-line arguments it currently supports are listed here:
https://valentin.dasdeck.com/c/dscmd/readme.txt

AFAICT there was no such purely DirectShow-based command-line player
yet, which is why I created it. There is e.g. ffplay.exe (which comes
with FFmpeg) which also supports DirectShow, but it has (statically
compiled) 40-60 MB, whereas my dscmd.exe only has 192 kB, since it
doesn't contain any media format/codec parsing code (like libavcodec for
ffmepg/ffplay) at all, but instead only relies on the DirectShow system.
And it also doesn't rely on SDL, but instead uses native Win-API windows
for displaying video in a window.

But it's nevertheless quite powerful, here a couple of features as
unsorted list:

- it allows to build arbitrary DirectShow graphs explicitely

- it allows to load DirectShow filters at runtime, so no registration
(which would require elevated privileges) needed.

- it supports VMR-7, WMR-9 and EVR video renderers (others, like
legacy renderer or Haali only work partially)

- using the LAV (or alternatively FFdshow) filters, it provides the
power of libavcodec etc., so about the same (long) list of supported
container formats and media codecs as ffplay/ffmpeg.

- SHOUTcast/Icecast audio and HLS video streaming support (via LAV
Splitter Source)

- Video/audio capturing support (playback or recording e.g. to AVI)

- interactive keyboard control (optional, via "-i")


Check out/run the demo batch scripts in folder "demos". Most of them
should run in any recent Windows (e.g. Win 8.x/Win 10.x, 32/64-bit).
Only 3 of them - demo_file_video.bat, demo_file_fullscreen.bat and
demo_url_video.bat - are meant to demonstrate direct video playback
without creating an explicit filter graph, and therefor rely on
appropriate filters registered in the system. If those 3 demos don't
work for you, you can execute "__register_run_as_admin.bat" in folder
"demos/filters" - by running it as admin, as the name suggests - to
register the provided LAV filters, then also those should work.

Final note: in interactive mode (-i), you can switch (toggle) any loaded
video to fullscreen by typing "f" after the video was loaded. But the
commandline argument "-fullscreen" is meant for situations when only
strict fullscreen playback is required and never the desktop should be
shown. Therefor this mode doesn't allow to switch back to non-fullscreen
mode, and therefor also not to quit the player by closing the video
window via close button in its title bar. To quit a player running in
this explicit fullscreen mode, in interactive mode just type "q" or ESC,
otherwise shortcut Alt-F4 always works.

</blockquote>

Trying this program but can't understand how to get a video to playback?

Does this look right?

dscmd -graph {B98D13E7-55DB-4385-A33D-09FD1BA26338};src=C:\Users\Trsula\palemoondownload s\dscmd-v0.4-x64\latest-x64\src=bbb_360p_10sec.mp4;{EE30215D-164F-4A92-A4EB-9D4C13390F9F},{04FE9017-F873-410E-871E-AB91661A4EF7},{51B4ABF3-748F-4E3B-A276-C828330E926A},{E8E73B6B-4CB3-44A4-BE99-4F7BCB96E491},{79376820-07D0-11CF-A24D-0020AFD79767}, -i -v=3 -progress

[fluxus]

Hi, since you try to use some custom filter (BASS) that I don't have, I can't debug this. But in general, if you use custom filters it's unlikely that the system can render them automatically, therefor you have to provide an explicit filter connection list, which you omited in the code you posted.

For creating a new DSCmd command line that actually works, I recommend to use my GraphStudioNext-Enhanced tool. Download and run the x64 release version, then build a graph that actually works when you press the green "play" button, and then finally select "Generate Code..." from the "File" menu and save the current graph as batch script for DSCmd. If you save it into the same folder as "dscmd.exe", the batch script should work out of the box, otherwise you either have to put the folder of dscmd.exe into the PATH environment variable or edit the batch script in a text editor and replace "DScmd.exe" with its absolute path. so e.g. "C:\Users\Trsula\palemoondownloads\dscmd-v0.4-x64\latest-x64\DScmd.exe".

Attached screenshot shows the process.


[Attachment 90082 - Click to enlarge]