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

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

, which then became an integral component of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

. 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 distri ...

, 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 ...

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

filed a lawsuit in 1994 alleging theft of several thousand lines of

QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is avai ...

source code to improve the software. The case was 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 onc ...

, and in exchange, Microsoft agreed to continue developing

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

and other software for

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. 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, rebranded "M ...

for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock.

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 technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

technology, which added digital video to the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

platform. Costing around $200, the product included

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

and

encoding In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

programs for use with video input boards. A runtime version for viewing videos only was also made available as a free add-on to

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 part ...

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

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

(API) that allowed

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

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 A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

along with the second beta of

Internet Explorer 3 Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 (IE3) is a graphical web browser which was announced in March 1996, and was released on August 13, 1996 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997 for Apple Mac OS (see IE for Mac). It began serious ...

. 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 IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

. 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 ar ...

. 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 such a ...

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

filed in December 1994 against

San Francisco Canyon Company San Francisco Canyon Company was a software development company that was contracted by Apple Computer in 1992 to port the QuickTime technology to Microsoft Windows. They made their first release of ''QuickTime for Windows'' in November 1992. In Ju ...

and in 1995 against

and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

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

; in exchange, Microsoft agreed to continue developing

and other software for

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 the DirectX 5, and around July started referring to it as

Version history

References

{{Microsoft APIs Computer-related introductions in 1992 Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Multimedia frameworks Discontinued Windows components

Overview

Version history

See also

References