Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

A book is rarely written alone; although a title might have one author, there are a host of midwives who help it into being. First and foremost, thanks go to the Microsoft DirectShow team, who created this technology, and especially to the following members who contributed specifically to this project: Syon Bhattacharya, John Carothers, Alok Chakrabarti, Ben Ellett, Glenn Evans, Dennis Evseev, Stephen Estrop, Dennis Flanagan, Matthijs Gates, David Goll, Jay Kapur, Tuan Le, Danny Miller, Stan Pennington, Michael Savage, Robin Speed, Gary Sullivan, and E-Zu Wu.

Michael Blome and Mike Wasson of the DirectShow Documentation team at Microsoft provided vital input into the design of the book, and their timely and thoughtful review of each chapter helped immeasurably. (They also contributed several of the sample programs discussed in the text.) Jay Loomis on their team provided helpful input on the Microsoft Windows Media chapter, and their manager, Peter Turcan, deserves a tip of the hat as well, for giving them the resources and time they needed to assist me in this project. Ross Cutler from Microsoft Research contributed the filter wizards many thanks to him for those.

At Microsoft Press, Barbara Moreland and Juliana Aldous Atkinson were patient, tireless, and hard workers who kept me well informed throughout the whole process of making this book happen, and they were responsive to my needs as they developed. Everyone at Microsoft Press did a wonderful job: from the art design, through the editing, and to production, everything went smoothly. The big boss, publisher Don Fowley, deserves a big thank you for managing such a great team.

This book required a few media samples. I d like to thank Brian Tibbetts and Liam Gowing of John Boy 9 for their song, Foggy Day, which is included on the CD (and used in several of the examples). The Sunset movie was shot with the help of the peerless Steven Piasecki. Finally, I d like to thank Jeff Cain, who put up with my 20-hour days as this book neared deadline.