CComPtr<IStream> stream; // Create stream object here ... HR(decoder->Initialize( stream, WICDecodeMetadataCacheOnDemand)); I'll discuss streams later in this article, but IStream is just the traditional COM stream interface used by many APIs including the XmlLite parser I covered in the April 2007 issue of MSDN® Magazine (msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/04/Xml). The second parameter to the I