To Enumerate All Installed Windows Media Codecs

[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Format 11 SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by Source Reader and Sink Writer. Source Reader and Sink Writer have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use Source Reader and Sink Writer instead of Windows Media Format 11 SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

The codec information interfaces all use codec indexes to identify individual codecs. Codecs are indexed independently for audio and for video. Within one type of codec, indexes range from 0, to one less than the number of codecs of that type.

The following example code shows how to get the index associated with each codec. To compile this code in your application, include stdio.h.

HRESULT GetCodecNames(IWMCodecInfo3* pCodecInfo)
{
    HRESULT hr = S_OK;
    DWORD   cCodecs  = 0;
    WCHAR*  pwszCodecName  = NULL;
    DWORD   cchCodecName     = 0;
    
    // Retrieve the number of supported audio codecs on the system.
    hr = pCodecInfo->GetCodecInfoCount(WMMEDIATYPE_Audio, &cCodecs);

    if(SUCCEEDED(hr))
        printf("Number of audio codecs: %d\n\n", cCodecs);
    else
    {
        printf("Could not get the count of audio codecs.\n");
        return hr;
    }

    // Loop through all the audio codecs.
    for(DWORD dwCodecIndex = 0; dwCodecIndex < cCodecs; dwCodecIndex++)
    {
        // Get the codec name:
        // First, get the size of the name.
        hr = pCodecInfo->GetCodecName(WMMEDIATYPE_Audio, 
                                      dwCodecIndex, 
                                      NULL, 
                                      &cchCodecName);
        if(FAILED(hr))
        {
            printf("Could not get the size of the codec name.\n");
            return hr;
        }

        // Allocate a string of the appropriate size.
        pwszCodecName = new WCHAR[cchCodecName];
        if(pwszCodecName == NULL)
        {
            printf("Could not allocate memory.\n");
            return E_OUTOFMEMORY;
        }

        // Retrieve the codec name.
        hr = pCodecInfo->GetCodecName(WMMEDIATYPE_Audio, 
                                      dwCodecIndex, 
                                      pwszCodecName, 
                                      &cchCodecName);
        if(FAILED(hr))
        {
            delete[] pwszCodecName;
            printf("Could not get the codec name.\n");
            return hr;
        }

        // Print the codec name.
        printf("%d %S\n", dwCodecIndex, pwszCodecName);

        // Clean up for the next iteration.
        delete[] pwszCodecName;
        pwszCodecName = NULL;
        cchCodecName  = 0;
    }

    // Retrieve the number of supported video codecs on the system.
    hr = pCodecInfo->GetCodecInfoCount(WMMEDIATYPE_Video, &cCodecs);

    if(SUCCEEDED(hr))
        printf("\n\nNumber of video codecs: %d.\n\n", cCodecs);
    else
    {
        printf("Could not get the count of video codecs.\n");
        return hr;
    }

    // Loop through all the video codecs.
    for(dwCodecIndex = 0; dwCodecIndex < cCodecs; dwCodecIndex++)
    {
        // Get the codec name:
        // First, get the size of the name.
        hr = pCodecInfo->GetCodecName(WMMEDIATYPE_Video, 
                                      dwCodecIndex, 
                                      NULL, 
                                      &cchCodecName);
        if(FAILED(hr))
        {
            printf("Could not get the size of the codec name.\n");
            return hr;
        }

        // Allocate a string of the appropriate size.
        pwszCodecName = new WCHAR[cchCodecName];
        if(pwszCodecName == NULL)
        {
            printf("Could not allocate memory.\n");
            return E_OUTOFMEMORY;
        }

        // Retrieve the codec name.
        hr = pCodecInfo->GetCodecName(WMMEDIATYPE_Video, 
                                      dwCodecIndex, 
                                      pwszCodecName, 
                                      &cchCodecName);
        if(FAILED(hr))
        {
            printf("Could not get the codec name.\n");
            return hr;
        }

        // Print the codec name.
        printf("%d %S\n", dwCodecIndex, pwszCodecName);

        delete[] pwszCodecName;
        pwszCodecName = NULL;
        cchCodecName  = 0;
    }
    return S_OK;
}

Related topics

Getting Stream Configuration Information from Codecs