GraphEdit

Included in the DirectX Media SDK, GraphEdit is a handy application designed for generating and testing filter graphs, which are used for processing multimedia files.

GraphEdit is capable of building a playback filter graph for multimedia files located either on your local hard drive or in an online location available at an URL address, as well as open a graph generated by an external process.

In order to start working with the application, you first have to choose the input file – both browsing for the file and 'drag and drop' are supported. The application offers a graphic view of the whole structure, by displaying every filter as a separate box, their input and output pins as small squares and the connections as arrows.

But that is not all: you can use GraphEdit to create a filter graph from scratch. To do that, the first step is to add one or more filters to the graph. In this case, there is a wide variety of options to choose from, which range from audio compressors and renderers, video / audio effects to video capture sources and WDM streaming codecs.

All filters are displayed as boxes, together with their pins. To connect them, you simply have to drag the output pin of a filter to the input pin of another. You can set a connection with a graph that is running in another application.

The 'Intelligent Connect' feature is designed to help with graph building by automatically adding the necessary intermediate filters. If the connection cannot be established, you get a notification message.

After opening or building your filter graph, you can play, pause, stop or skip frames of the input multimedia file.

GraphEdit can be used for rendering, reconnecting or disconnecting pins, as well as viewing the filter registry data, properties or generating statistics. Overall, it is an easy to use tool for rendering media files and testing filters.