The most common ways to load a network are to load it from file using openvip_load_network_file or from string contained in memory using openvip_load_network_from_string. The latter is useful if you need to generate the network dynamically, for example when previewing a filter in GUI.

Networks loaded this way, however, can only store rendered video into file. Many applications need ability to further process the output and so they need to get raw data from OpenVIP in some kind of memory buffer. Function openvip_load_network_with_memoutput_from_string is designed to meet this need (note that it only works with video output, audio is not supported). The network is given as a string (as in openvip_load_network_from_string), but there is additional requirement on the network: it must contain exactly one terminal module whose type must be openvip.highlevel_api.MemOutput. ID of the module is given as another argument. The last argument is openvip_dest_t structure that has a pointer to callback function. The callback is called for every generated frame with raw data in RGB24 format as argument.

A typical network for processing with memory output looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE network PUBLIC
          "-//OPENVIP//DTD Network Format V1.0//EN" 
          "http://openvip.sourceforge.net/dtds/openvip-network.dtd">

<network xmlns="http://openvip.sourceforge.net/network-format" version="1.0">

    <module id="loader0" class="Input">
        <param name="filename">test.avi</param>
    </module>

    <module id="OUTPUT" class="openvip.highlevel_api.MemOutput">
        <param name="filename">clasa.wav</param>
        <param name="format">Wav</param>
    </module>

    <connect module_in="loader0" conn_in="audio0" module_out="OUTPUT" conn_out="audio0"/>

</network>

And the call to create rendering network:

void callback_func(unsigned char *data, size_t len, void *cookie)
{
    /* process len bytes in data... */
}
...
openvip_task_t *task;
openvip_dest_t dest;
dest.cookie = NULL; /*we don't use it*/
dest.callback = callback_func;
task = openvip_load_network_with_memoutput_from_string(lib, bufferWithNetworkCode, "OUTPUT", &dest);

There are two functions for rendering loaded networks: openvip_render and openvip_render_single_frame. The former completely render the task and returns when rendering is completed. It has two optional parameters to specify UI callback (analogically to openvip_set_ui_callback). If not NULL, then this callback is used instead of the one set using openvip_set_ui_callback.

The other one only works with video networks created using openvip_load_network_with_memoutput_from_string or openvip_create_thumbnails_generator. It renders only one (specified) frame of the output instead of rendering everything and returns rendered raw data. Returned buffer is same as the one passed to openvip_dest_t callback when using openvip_render on the same network.

After you are done with rendering, you must destroy the task using openvip_destroy_task.

openvip_task_t *task = openvip_load_network_file(lib, "foo.avi");
openvip_render(lib, task);
openvip_destroy_task(lib, task);

The API contains function for effective creation of thumbnails, too. Thumbnails are very small and short video sequences that represent video or audio stream. Images from the sequence are intended to be layed alongside to form a strip, as in this example (note that there are two thumbnails in the image, for video stream and for audio below it):

Thumbnails are rendered by network obtained from openvip_create_thumbnails_generator fuction. The function takes file- and streamname as arguments, together with desired dimensions of produced images and number of thumbnail frames. The function returns OpenVIP network renderable using openvip_render or openvip_render_single_frame. Network's output is passed to callback function specified as the last argument to openvip_create_thumbnails_generator in exactly same way as when using load_network_with_memoutput_from_string. The network will produce one video stream with requested dimensions and specified number of frames long.

Thumbnails generator caches generated thumbnails in temporary directory. Cache's data structures are designed in such way that not only are subsequent uses of the generator with same file and arguments much faster, but it also speeds up creation of thumbnail strips with same dimensions but different number of frames (not even same dimensions are required for audio streams). This is accomplished by storing thumbnail images for every frame of the stream and composing final N-frames thumbnail from N such "subthumbnails" uniformly distributed along streams' length.

Information about multimedia file's content can be obtained easily using the highlevel API. openvip_get_file_info function returns pointer to openvip_file_info_t structure which contains filename and two arrays: one of them is list of all video streams contained in the file, the other lists audio streams. Stream information structure for video streams contains width, height, FPS, aspect ratio and length in frames. Audio stream information consists of sample rate, number of channels (1-mono, 2-stereo, ...) and length in samples.

unsigned i;
openvip_file_info_t *fi = openvip_get_file_info(lib, "foo.avi");
for (i = 0; i < fi->video_cnt; i++)
    printf("video stream %s: %ix%i\",
    fi->video_streams[i].name, fi->video_streams[i].width, fi->video_streams[i].height);
for (i = 0; i < fi->audio_cnt; i++)
    printf("audio stream %s: %iHz %s\",
    fi->audio_streams[i].name, fi->audio_streams[i].sample_rate,
    fi->audio_streams[i].channels == 1 ? "mono" : "stereo");
openvip_free(lib, fi);

Function openvip_enum_plugins can be used to enumerate all plugins of certain type (one of OPENVIP_PLUGIN_VIDEO_FILTER, OPENVIP_PLUGIN_AUDIO_FILTER, OPENVIP_PLUGIN_VIDEO_TRANSITION, OPENVIP_PLUGIN_AUDIO_TRANSITION, OPENVIP_PLUGIN_INPUT and OPENVIP_PLUGIN_OUTPUT). The function returns openvip_plugins_info_t structure which is esentially an array of name and description fields for every plugin. The former is formal name of the plugin to be used in OpenVIP network format files, the latter is descriptive name intented for humans (and as such is suitable for use in GUIs).

unsigned i;
openvip_plugins_info_t *p = openvip_enum_plugins(lib, OPENVIP_PLUGIN_VIDEO_FILTER);
for (i = 0; i < p->cnt; i++)
    printf("filter '%s' has description '%s'\n", p->plugins[i].name, p->plugins[i].description);
openvip_free(lib, p);