I'm currently designing a video editor which I intend to use to cut movies, apply effects and transitions, incorporate a soundtrack, generally everything that the DirectShow Editing Services (DES) allow me to do. Today, I read that a specific header file, qedit.h, which defines the interfaces that make up DES, isn't compatible with DirectX > 7.

Now, I've lerned about the Video Mixing Renderer (VMR-7 or VMR-9, the former's included with WinXP, the latter with DirectX 9). The following is a short excerpt taken from the DirectX 9 documentation about the features of VMR:
The ability to plug in your own compositing component to implement effects and transitions between multiple video streams entering the VMR.
Now, based on the documentation and what I found on the internet, I've come to understand it the following way:
  • DES provides a simple model for video editing applications. It provides a timeline and all the necessary objects to fill it with. When rendering the timeline, DES builds a Filter Graph using a rendering engine, which will then either be rendered to the screen or a file. Effects and transitions are implemented using DirectX Transforms, which don't support DirectX > 7.
  • VMR-9 operates on a Filter Graph, but doesn't provide the video editing functionality DES provides. Thus, when using VMR-9 and its advanced DirectX 9 features, you'd have to build your own video editing model and translate that to a Filter Graph when it is to be rendered.
  • VMR-9 and DES cannot be used together.

Is that correct? I've searched Google Groups, Googled the web, but any answers I find just seem to confuse me even more.

Additionally, can I build applications that make use of either DES or VMR with any COM-aware language? I don't have much experience with C++, and I'd like to write the video editor using C#.