## What Background Do You Need?

The amount you need to know for a particular DirectShow task depends on the task. For example, you must understand basic COM principles and C or C++ to create a filter. But you don't need to understand either to use the ActiveMovie Control.

The following tables show what you might need to know to perform different tasks and get the most out of the DirectShow documentation. To find the information you need, see Documentation Roadmap for a description of what you'll find in the different sections of the DirectShow documentation. See Where Can I Learn About... for the location of answers to specific questions within the DirectShow documentation, and see How to Get More Information for the location of useful information outside the DirectShow documentation.

The following table shows the background you might need to understand different sections of the DirectShow documentation.

Section | Background needed
Getting Started | None.
Using the ActiveMovie Control | You must know Microsoft® Visual Basic® or C/C++ if you're using the control from within them. If you're using the control as an end-user and not developing applications with it, the section is self-sufficient.
DirectShow Basics | None.
Application Developer's Guide | You must know the language you are developing your application in, and basic COM programming.
Filter Developer's Guide | You must be experienced with C/C++ and basic COM programming.
C/C++ Reference | You must know C/C++ and basic COM. For the "Debugging" section, it would be useful to understand basic debugging procedures, such as how to generate debug information or check for memory leaks. For the Event Notification Codes section, it might be helpful to know a little about Windows messaging.
Filters and Samples | You must know C/C++ and basic COM. Depending on your filter, you might need to know a little about DirectSound® and DirectDraw®, or understand multimedia capture and compression.
Appendixes | You must know a little about C to understand Reserved Identifiers, and you need to know a little about multimedia to understand Media Types.
Glossary | None.

The following table shows the background you might need to accomplish a sampling of tasks in DirectShow.

Task | Background needed
Use the ActiveMovie Control as an end-user. | None.
Use the Filter Graph Editor tool. | None.
Write a filter. | You must be experienced with C/C++ and basic COM.
Create or control a filter graph in Visual Basic. | You must be familiar with Visual Basic and basic COM.
Play a movie. | To play a movie in a Visual Basic or C/C++ application, you must be familiar with those languages and with basic COM programming. To play a movie from a Web page, you should be familiar with HTML, but the DirectShow documents will explain the rudiments, such as using the OBJECT and HREF tags.
Write a media-streaming application. | You must be familiar with C/C++ and basic COM.

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