Hi everyone,
I am working on a project and want to add video, but I want to gage how difficult and/or expensive it will be for me to implement. The program is designed to display images and text on two screens so that a professional video switcher will be able combine the two and create an overlay. To do this one screen shows the RGB values and the other the alpha value. The alpha screen uses white for fully opaque, black for fully transparent, and shades of gray for partially transparent. Currently the program can split an image that has alpha information or can accept two separate images (again one for the RGB and the other for the alpha). I would like to be able to do is include video instead of just images. I do not know much about directshow so there is a challenge there. I do not believe having 2 video inputs would be practical for my customers, so I really need a system to decode then split the video. My ideal solution would be to find a filter to decode and split the stream, but I believe that I will have to find/buy a decoder that will output in ARGB32 (from what I can find, the built in filters from Microsoft will drop the alpha) then find/buy/build a filter to split the stream into RGB and Alpha. So my question is, am I on the right track? If not, could you please direct me to more information? Also, is there a filter to decode and split the video? What about just splitting the video? I know there are a lot that will decode in ARGB32, any suggestions about which is the best/most cost effective?
Thanks for your help and suggestions!!