We Keep Coding

Playing a video file in server through WPF

I have a video file at my Server and the path to which resembles like "10.151.98.82/Medias/New/Videos/001.dat".
(Actually a video file but the extension is in .dat)
I have already built a WPF application which allows my users to enter the above Server URL and then let them to download it and then play it.
But my guess is that they need not wait till the entire file gets downloaded; just watch the files on the fly.
I have googled on video streaming but could not get a solid material to proceed on with.
[Sorry, if the question is naive or needs modification, i will be happy to do that or move to a relevant forum.]
Any pointers on how to do this is much appreciated.
Edit: This question talks about WCF service and WPF application. But, I dont' use a WCF Service. The video file has to be streamed from the server.

First try to play your file using VLC Player. it also have many advance streaming and Trans-coding Options. you can play, save and trans code simultaneously. Once you are able to Play your file in VLC Player than i would recommend to use VlcDotNet for wpf application. Tutorial for hosting VlcDotNet is available in downloads

How can i get an image from a pcap file?

I wrote a basic c# wrapper for winpcap to capture packets from an interface and saving them to a dump file. Now i wanna get images in that pcap files. Is there a c# library for this purpose?

Have a look at DriftNet
Inspired by EtherPEG (though, not owning an Apple Macintosh, I've never actually seen it in operation), Driftnet is a program which listens to network traffic and picks out images from TCP streams it observes. Fun to run on a host which sees lots of web traffic.

How to measure upload and download internet speed with silverlight and ASP.NET MVC

How to measure upload and download internet speed with silverlight and ASP.NET MVC between client and server.
How I think it's need to download/upload a file on the server.
Please help me with this problem
Thanks in advance

Sounds like you are trying to recreate SpeedTest.net. They use Flash, but the concepts should be roughly the same.
If you're referring to ASP.NET MVC because the Silverlight app is hosted on it, I'm not sure it will impact your design. This assumes that all the speed testing logic and UI is implemented in the Silverlight application.
Here's a good article from Laurent Bugnion on downloading files using WebClient:
http://www.galasoft.ch/mydotnet/articles/article-2008032301.html
That should give you all the information you need to download the file to the client, display a progress bar, and be notified when the download is complete. Using a fixed-size dummy data file, you can easily calculate the speed based on the size and time to download. The file should be fairly large but not too large, say 10 - 15Mb. That will ensure an accurate estimate of speed for both slow and very fast connections.
Uploading will work the same way in reverse. KrystalWare's SlickUpload component should have all the features you need.

The quick and dirty way to do it is just transfer a file to the client and have it send it back.
What you will need to do is have a file of known size, download it to the client, take the filesize/time to transfer and that is your download speed. Do the reverse process to get the upload speed.
It is a good idea to have a file at least a few MB in size so it can average out the peeks and valleys in the transfer.

You realize, of course, that the results of your test will be completely dependent on the internet connection that you are using to run the test. From what I am reading, your really just testing your internet connection, which you can do on various websites, such as www.speedtest.net.

Video Capturing + Uploading + Processing + Streaming back - .NET & C#

We are trying to find out any technologies/libraries available in .NET stack (even wrappers on top of 3rd party dlls) that'll help us to build an app that can
1 - Capture an image from a user's video device
2 - Upload it realtime to a server
3 - Process the video (in the server) - eg: Adding a watermark to the video
4 - Stream it back to the user/other users
Preferably, the time delay/latency between step2 and 4 should be minimal
The first requirement (capturing) seems pretty straight forward. The challenge is identifying a suitable way to do the upload, do the processing, and stream it back. Any valid suggestions or ideas?
Recently came acrsoss FFmpeg library, and it has a C# wrapper. Does FFmpeg can be used to do the processing side?

I would go about it this way:
Use silverlight or flash to capture the video camera input, e.g. as detailed here.
You can send the byte-stream over a socket that your server is listening to.
On the receiving end, just use the socket-accepting program as a router-program with a number of listening workers connected. Between workers and router-program, e.g. AMQP with RabbitMQ. Send asynchronous messages (e.g. with reactive extensions) with e.g. the stream encoding to the rabbit-node, which then can either further all messages to one single computer as a part of a conversation/user-session, or interleave between the available workers. Here's the manual. As the video is encoded, it is streamed asynchronously over the message bus back. According to intel tests the bus itself should work well at high throughputs, but they had to use the interleaved tcp channel mode (they tested on a gigabit lan). Other users here have suggested FFlib. You might also look into having the workers convert into webM, but if FFlib works, that might be a lot easier. Each worker publishes over AMQP the next encoded video piece. A server-running program, e.g. the router program I talked about before, starts sending to the client (see no. 4)
Have a client-program, e.g. silverlight/flash connect (for example over the same socket that you opened for client->server data, or over HTTP), and read the byte-stream with a decoder. Render the output.

VideoLab from Mitov can accomplish all of this and is free for personal use (not so free for commercial use, but pricing is not too heavy).
I have bought and use the Delphi version and know it works extremely well, so I'm pretty sure the .NET version will do what you need.
This kind of task is not trivial (as seen by the lack of responses here), so expect to struggle considerably with DirectX/Microsoft Media Encoder- but with this toolkit and some help from the author, you will eventually succeed.
http://www.mitov.com/html/videolab.html

It seems that Splicer can process static video and convert it - I'm not sure about processing a realtime uploaded video - http://splicer.codeplex.com/

Take a look at Video.Show by Vertigo. It's an open source website for user-generated video content. It uses the Expression Encoder to handle compression/video editing. It's not exactly what you need, but it's a good start!

You could use Silverlight for capture as is mentioned above, and then use Expression Encoder to push it to a stream server or stream from there directly.
It should have everything you need:
Smart encoding/smart recompression for
WMV if the source is also WMV and no
frame operations are performed [4],
cuts editing, serial batch encoding,
Live encoding from webcams and DV
camcorders
Decoding/import format support because
of DirectShow
Smooth streaming (720p+ video using
HTTP) with optimized client
(Silverlight) and server (IIS with
smooth streaming)
WebDAV publishing, publishing plugins
for Silverlight Streaming, Amazon S3
Importing XAML overlays created in
Expression Design and customizing
their timing, animation, opacity,
placement and looping
JavaScript trigger events
Windows Media 11 SDK and VC-1 SDK
integration, native MPEG-2 decoder
Adding captions to videos using SAMI
or W3C Timed Text format
Previewing and comparing encoding
settings in real time
Screen capture
Object model for the encoding engine,
SDK downloadable separately

The question is kind of short on details (is this a web server, what os is the server? etc) but I'll take a stab based on what I think you're trying to do.
One thing you might consider is doing the capture and process at one time. If the user is running your client app, have that do the capture and processing via DirectShow. Then all you need to do is upload the video and you can skip the entire server process. This is assuming that the 'user' is under your control - that this is not some random person out there uploading video, but an employee or someone otherwise trusted.
If this isnt the case, then ffmpeg can certainly be used to watermark video on your server. You dont really need 'wrappers' for it. You can just call it as a command line app from your server application and wait for it to finish.
The process really isnt that complex... its the details that are going to matter (for example - what does 'stream' mean to you? Do you really mean 'stream', or is this via http? Thats a huge topic right there)

How to convert a printer driver to a stand-alone console application which can generate a printer file containing the bytes to be sent to the printer?

I have a situation where the only way to generate a certain datafile is to print it manually to FILE: under Windows and save it in a file for further processing.
I would really like to have a small stand-alone program which embeds this binary printer driver so I can run it from a batch file and have it generate that binary file for me, as we can then fully automate the "save file in Visio, 'print' it and upload it to the final destination and trigger a remote test".
Is this possible with a suitable Windows SDK? I am a Java programmer, so I do not know Visual Studio and the possibilities with MSDN - yet! - but I'd appreciate pointers.
EDIT: I have the installation files for that printer driver, both 32 and 64 bit. Older versions may include a 16 bit driver.
EDIT: The "print to FILE:" functionality is just what was recommended by the documentation. I have played a little bit with using the LPR-protocol to see what it can do. I'd still prefer the "invoke small binary" approach.

The general problem which you formulate is difficult to solve. Mostly a printer driver consists from some well known components like Print Monitor, Print Processor etc. which are well documented in Windows Driver Kit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff560885%28v=VS.85%29.aspx. Some years ago I wrote a Print Monitor. It worked many years at a customer. So I know exactly what I writing about. A Print Monitor is nothing more as a DLL with well documented functions. The same is about most other printer components. Those DLLs will be loaded and called from Spooler. If you have a modern printer driver it has no components which run in kernel mode. So one can load most of DLLs from which consist every printer driver and call corresponding function.
You are interesting for using one concert printer driver. So the first what one should do is to examine how this driver is implemented. If you find out which component do the job which you need, you will be probably able to load this DLL in your process and produce output which you need. It is possible that you post an URL where I could download this driver?
UPDATED: I though a little more about your requirements. It seems to me you can goes with the way suggested by developer of the printer driver. If the driver can print to a local port FILE, then it can print in any printer port. So you can give src of a Port Monitor Server driver from C:\WinDDK\7600.16385.1\src\print\monitors\localmon (see also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff556478%28v=VS.85%29.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff549405%28v=VS.85%29.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff563806%28v=VS.85%29.aspx). (I is a windows 32/64 DLL, not a real driver) and makes small modification. Instead of saving results to a file you can dispatch the results to your application. It will be work with 100% without any tricks. If you will have some problem to understand localmon I can give you some tips. It is really not complex. The main changes which you have to do is to modify LcmStartDocPort LcmWritePort LcmReadPort LcmEndDocPort functions from localmon.c. Some easy thing which is distinguish Port DLL from a typical DLL, that instead of exporting all DLL's functions it export only one InitializePrintMonitor2 with pointers to all other functions.
UPDATED 2: One more tip for usage of "Local Port" monitor. If goes in printer configuration, then choose "Add Port...", select "Local Port" and click "New Port..." you can type any file name like "C:\temp\my.bin". Then all what you print through a printer will be printed in this file without any user iteration. The name can be any win32 file name (UNC names or Named pipes are also allowed). With this way you can realize some scenarios without any programming with DDK.
UPDATED 3: I looked at the printer driver from different sides and looked one more time in the API in DDK. Now I want recommend you to choose the easiest way, and the way which will be full supported from the driver manufacturer. I suggest following:
You install a printer with the driver which you need and choose as the output port a Local Port with a fixed file name (see Update 2). I named here the destination filename as C:\TEMP\Output.afp. So you receive exactly the same situation like recommend you driver manufacturer. Fixed file name is absolutely the same as FILE: port. So if you print to the printer you receive in Output.afp file in the C:\TEMP directory. To be sure the end of writing you can use ReadDirectoryChangesW or FindNextChangeNotification / FindFirstChangeNotification functions with dwNotifyFilter equal to FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_LAST_WRITE. Then you receive notification after last write-time of the file. It means after the end of writing and after FileClose and after the cache is sufficiently flushed. So the file Output.afp is not locked and you can really safe read the results.
For printing of simple documents you can use WritePrinter function (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162959%28VS.85%29.aspx and remark in the documentation http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd145226%28VS.85%29.aspx). Writing of complex files with bitmaps, color and different fonts you have to use typical GDI API like one this in Windows (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162865%28v=VS.85%29.aspx).
This solution looks not very spectacular like writing a printer driver component or a simulation of spooler environment for printer driver, but it will work, will safe work and will be full supported from the driver manufacturer.

(It's been 10 years since I did anything like this, but I don't think the overall concepts have changed all that much:)
What you want to do is implement a custom print processor. A print processor is the piece of code that takes the output that the printer driver generates and transports it to the output device. Print processors are implemented as regular user-mode DLLs. You should be able to find everything you need, including samples, in the Windows DDK.

A while ago we made a commercial application which captured print streams from any windows application and converted the result to XML and tiff images
We did make a prototype with the DDK, but ended up buying a SDK for the print capturing
The SDK was from BlackIce. Although it wasn´t a free SDK, the distribution of the runtimes were royalty free.
Implementation was done with Visual C (unmanaged) and VB6.
The printer driver had to be installed on the server/PC that drove the printing process.
I remember that the tricky part was to control the printer settings in runtime (keep the tiffs compressed, output directory for the files, paper size:A4 or Letter and other settings that were defined in the DEVMODE print control structure).
UPDATE: (Your comment to #Oleg about MO:DCA P triggered my memory. Although it is not about a printer driver...)
For our commercial product, we also had to make a customization to convert MO:DCA (AFP) documents to tiffs and XML.
This SDK had to be able to extract both images and ascii text to enable later conversions
Conversion where then made in batch from AFP documents in one folder to XML and tiffs.
We chose to convert the AFP file after it had been printed (not during print).
The SDK is SnowBound RasterMaster and is available in different flavours (we used the Windows API with ActiveX, and I see now that it is available for Java)
So if your requirement is to convert an AFP document to someting else (extract images and extract ascii text) you could try out the software from SnowBound. Make sure you also get the Optional Feature to be able to extract ASCII text from the MO DCA documents.
This software SDK is more expensive, but it did the job.
They offer a trial version here.

At the moment i have one missing link in your explanation, so let me rephrase what i understood:
You have a special printer driver on your windows system, that is configured to print into a file.
You like to have a simple batch program that can give something to this printer driver to output a binary file.
You have a toolchain where this file can be further processed.
Now my missing part is, what do you want to give to your little batch script, so that it produces your binary file? Do you have a Visio file which should be automatically printed through this driver?
If yes, you should take a look into this little batch script. It is able to take any file with a registered file extension and send it to the default printer with its default settings. By using these settings you are able to change the printer settings within your windows system from a batch file to make your special driver the default one and putting the output into a file.
So if i understood you correctly i didn't had the complete solution but i think a good starting point to accomplish your task.
Update
Ok, after reading your comment, i fully understood what you like to achieve. To get this to work you have to follow Per Larsens advice to write your own driver with the windows ddk (or to be more precise the Windows Driver Kit [WDK]) and encapsulate the already existing driver.
So in short and simple: Your driver signs up as new printer driver. When it is called it gets all the raw bytes from the application. Passes it into the driver that can generate your datafile. Get the output from that driver back and do with it whatever you like.
Some samples to get started can also be found in MSDN as overview or more precisely here.
But just to say it right beforehand: This is not an easy or simple task and the effort is quite high. Maybe trying to manipulate the driver settings of your special driver through the already given batches or a simple application (written with AutoIt) can also solve your problem, by just interacting (automatically) with the settings of the driver.

I can live with "When a user prints any file to this particular Windows printer, then automatically capture the bytes that would have been sent to the printer".
In that case, you want something like RedMon, which redirects the bytes which would have gone to the printer into the input for another program.

Just to reiterate, probably the simplest capture method is using a new Local Port configured as a filename. You can to monitor the output file as previously discussed to catch the output.
Otherwise, you want to write your own port monitor - not a printer driver or a print processor. All a port monitor does is receive the already rendered data from the printer driver, and sends it to the output device. So writing your own port monitor will allow you to go in and change the output port associated with the existing printer driver to be your own output port, and your port monitor can simply write the data to a file, probably one with a unique filename in a dedicated directory.
Printer drivers are far too complicated for what you want to do, and while a print processor could also capture the output data, you'd probably get entangled in some scantily documented system issues you won't want to have to figure out.
The LocalMon sample in the Windows Driver Kit is THE starting point for writing a port monitor. However, it manages all the system local ports and is quite a bit more complex than you need. In fact, much of it is just likely to confuse you. I'd recommend you start with LocalMon, and compare it to the Redmon source, which is much simpler because it manages a dedicated port. Beware that the Redmon source was taken from localmon long ago and appears to have a few bugs, so use Redmon as a reference and pare back the LocalMon code to what's needed to just write the output to a file.

You don't embed drivers in executables- drivers are for the operating system to communicate with the hardware.
You print via the Operating system.
Your 'batch' needs to select the correct printer, and print...