ffdshow video decoder configuration under Windows XP |
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| Stable release | r4052 / November 20, 2011 |
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| Development status | Active |
| Written in | Assembly, C++, C[1] |
| Operating system | Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 |
| Platform | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Video codec |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout |
ffdshow is a media decoder and encoder mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. encoded with DivX, Xvid, or FFmpeg MPEG-4) and AVC (H.264) 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.
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ffdshow does not include media player or container parsers. Instead, after installation of ffdshow, compatible DirectShow or VFW media players such as Media Player Classic, Winamp, and Windows Media Player (not 12) will use the ffdshow decoder automatically, thus avoiding the need to install separate codecs for the various formats supported by ffdshow. The user configures ffdshow's audio and video settings by launching the ffdshow video decoder configuration program independently of any media player.
For playing transport stream files such as AVC(H.264) an additional mediasplitter should also be installed. There are several free mediasplitters available such as the Haali Media Splitter.
ffdshow can be configured to display subtitles, to enable or disable various built-in codecs, to grab screenshots, to enable keyboard control, and to enhance movies with increased resolution, sharpness, and many other post-processing video filters. It has the ability to manipulate audio with effects like an equalizer, a Dolby decoder, reverb, Winamp DSP plugins, and more. Some of the postprocessing is borrowed from the MPlayer project and AviSynth filters.
ffdshow uses the libavcodec library and several other free, open source software packages to decode video in most common formats, such as:
ffdshow also decodes audio, such as:
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 first versions of ffdshow were published in April 2002, as an alternative to the DivX ;-) 3.11 and DivX 5.02 (which came bundled with Gator[2]) decoders of the time, and as a way to combine the speed and quality of MPlayer with popular Windows video players. It continues to support more formats, new and old, as FFmpeg developers add support for them.
The main developer was Milan Cutka. When he stopped updating the project in 2006, new maintainers opened the ffdshow-tryouts as a fork, where bugfixes, stability fixes, new features, and codec updates continue.
A common misconception is that ICL SSE/SSE2 builds will decode video better than "generic" builds. In fact, the video decoders are always compiled in gcc and are usually hand-optimized; it is the ffdshow filters that benefit from ICL.[3]
Codec packs or transcoding suites like Nero Recode that install their own video splitters also have been known to damage ffdshow's performance in the past. Some will override ffdshow, disrupt proper video display, or install outdated ffdshow versions.
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