LEAD Windows Media Reader

The LEAD Windows Media Reader is a DirectShowÒ source filter for parsing Windows Media Files. It is especially useful for playing Windows Media files under Vista from a URL.

This filter supports the standard IFileSourceFilter interface. Use the IFileSourceFilter::Load method to let the LEAD Windows Media Reader filter know where to read the data from. Please see the Microsoft documentation for this interface for more information.

The LEADTOOLS Multimedia toolkit will automatically use this filter (if it is available) to play Windows Media from a URL. This filter is required for playing Windows Media files from a URL under Vista because there is no alternate filter that would provide this functionality in Vista. There was a Windows Media Source filter provided by Microsoft with XP and earlier operating systems, but that filter has been discontinued starting with Vista.

Technical details for the filter are provided in the following table: