It was developed as a reaction to Apple Computer's QuickTime technology, which added digital video to the Macintosh platform.
Costing around $200,[1] the product included editing and encoding programs for use with video input boards.
Video for Windows became an issue in a lawsuit Apple filed in December 1994 against San Francisco Canyon Company and in 1995 against Microsoft and Intel alleging theft of several thousand lines of QuickTime source code to improve the performance of Video for Windows.
[3][4][5][6] This lawsuit was ultimately settled in 1997, when Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser over Netscape; in exchange, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Microsoft Office and other software for Mac OS for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock.
[7][8] In March 1997, Microsoft announced that ActiveMovie would become part of DirectX 5,[9] and around July started referring to it as DirectShow.