ffdshow is a media decoder and encoder mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 and AVC formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well. It is free software released under the GPL license, runs on Windows, and is implemented as a DirectShow and VFW decoding filter.
ffdshow consumes less CPU power than original DivX codecs, even with maximum post-processing. At the same time the post-processing seems to give excellent quality results and allows more configuring than the original DivX codec. The noise filter adds a kind of a rasterising effect to the picture – might be useful in some cases.
[advt]After installation of ffdshow, compatible DirectShow media players such as Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, Winamp, or Zoom Player will use the ffdshow decoder automatically, thus avoiding the need to install separate codecs for the various different formats supported by ffdshow. ffdshow can be configured separately from the media player, for instance to switch on subtitles, to remove logos, to enable or disable various built-in codecs to grab screenshots to enable keyboard control, in a home theater PC for enhancing media attributes such as the resolution and sharpness of DVD-Video, or to add any other of a rich set of post processing filters.
The post-processing video filters of ffdshow can be used in video editors such as VirtualDub or AviSynth, by configuring the VFW settings. In these editors, ffdshow can also be used to encode MPEG-4 video compatible with Xvid, DivX, or x264 codecs, as well as lossless video and a few other formats supported by libavcodec.
The user configures ffdshow’s audio and video settings by launching the ffdshow video decoder configuration program independently of any media player.
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