Video for Windows was a suite of video-playing and editing software introduced by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1, which then became an integral component of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

. Video for Windows was mostly replaced by the July 1996 release of

ActiveMovie ActiveMovie was the immediate ancestor of Windows Media Player 6.x, and was a streaming media technology now known as DirectShow, developed by Microsoft to replace Video for Windows. ActiveMovie allows users to view media streams, whether distribu ...

, later known as

DirectShow DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...

Overview

Video for Windows was first introduced in November 1992. It was developed as a reaction to

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

technology, which added digital video to the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

platform. Costing around $200, the product included

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

and

encoding In communications and Data processing, information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter (alphabet), letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes data compression, shortened or ...

programs for use with video input boards. A runtime version for viewing videos only was also made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11; it then became an integral component of

and later. Like QuickTime, Video for Windows had three key aspects:

Audio Video Interleave Audio Video Interleave (also Audio Video Interleaved and known by its initials and filename extension AVI, usually pronounced ) is a proprietary multimedia container format and Windows standard introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as p ...

(AVI), a container file format designed to store digital video; an

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

(API) that allowed

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

s to play or manipulate

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

in their own applications; a suite of software for playing and editing digital video. VfW software suite consisted of: * Media Player *VidCap *VidEdit *BitEdit *PalEdit *WaveEdit The original version was limited to a maximum resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels and a maximum image rate of 30 frames per second. Video for Windows was mostly replaced by the July 1996 release of

, later known as

. It was first released as a

beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

along with the second beta of Internet Explorer 3. ActiveMovie was released as a free download, either standalone or bundled with

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

. ActiveMovie, however, did not support

video capture Video capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera, DVD player, or television tuner—to digital video and sending it to local storage or to external circuitry. The resulting digital data ...

. Video for Windows was still used for video capture until the release of

Windows Driver Model In computing, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows su ...

capture drivers, which only started to become popular in 2000. Video for Windows became an issue in a lawsuit

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

filed in December 1994 against San Francisco Canyon Company and in 1995 against

and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

alleging theft of several thousand lines of

source code to improve the performance of Video for Windows. This lawsuit was ultimately settled in 1997, when Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser over

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

; in exchange, Microsoft agreed to continue developing

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

and other software for

Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock. In March 1997, Microsoft announced that ActiveMovie would become part of DirectX 5, and around July started referring to it as

Version history

References

{{Microsoft APIs 1992 software Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Multimedia frameworks Discontinued Windows components

Overview

Version history

See also

References