   Video playing
  What is the most common and useful way to play a video in a Win32 application? I am looking to put it into a tool I am writing with wxWidgets.   
DirectShow can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. It's the multimedia framework used by software such as Windows Media Player or Media Player Classic.   ;  I was looking for something besides DirectShow, is there any thing else that is used?   ;  Check out ffmpeg or libtheora.   ;  Sure, there are tons of them.Since you don't seem to like DirectShow but are still interested in games, I'd steer away from the generic players like the ffmpeg bundle and the various mpg and mov players, since they don't compress, resample, or rescale very well.Rad Game Tools has several such as Bink video and the Miles Sound System that are used in many games.  ActImagine has Mobiclip which is focused more on portable devices.  Both companies specialize in extremely tight compression and encodings with playback that looks good on a variety of displays and systems with very lightweight playback requirements.Out of curiosity, how much are you willing to pay?  DirectShow is free; most good codecs and technologies are not.   