ffdshow is an open-source unmaintained

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...

library that is mainly used for decoding of

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

in the

MPEG-4 ASP MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/ IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine ...

(e.g. encoded with DivX or

Xvid Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi mas ...

) and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

video format Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

s, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well. It is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

released under

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

2.0, runs on

Windows Windows is a group of several Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, W ...

, and is implemented as a

Video for Windows Video for Windows was a suite of video playing and editing software introduced by Microsoft in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1, which then became an integral component of Windows ...

(VFW) codec and a DirectShow filter.

Installation and configuration

ffdshow does not include a media player or

container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

parsers Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Latin ...

. Instead, after installation of ffdshow, compatible DirectShow or

VFW The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), formally the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, is an organization of US war veterans, who, as military service members fought in wars, campaigns, and expeditions on foreign land, waters, or ...

media players such as

Media Player Classic Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

, and

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...

will use the ffdshow decoder automatically, thus avoiding the need to install separate

s 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 MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast systems ...

files such as AVC(H.264) an additional mediasplitter should also be installed. There are several free mediasplitters available such as the

LAV Filters FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vi ...

an
Haali Media Splitter

Format and filter support

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 Resolution(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate * Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body * New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual m ...

, sharpness, and many other post-processing video filters. It has the ability to manipulate audio with effects like an equalizer, a

Dolby Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (often shortened to Dolby Labs and known simply as Dolby) is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to ...

decoder, reverb,

DSP plugins, and more. Some of the postprocessing is borrowed from the

MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS using ...

project and

AviSynth AviSynth is a frameserver program for Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS initially developed by Ben Rudiak-Gould, Edwin van Eggelen, Klaus Post, Richard Berg and Ian Brabham in May 2000 and later picked up and maintained by the open source commun ...

filters. ffdshow uses the

libavcodec libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data. libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPV, xine and VLC media players use ...

library and several other free, open source software packages to decode video in most common formats, such as: *

MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/ IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine t ...

(including video encoded with

3ivx 3ivx ( ) was an MPEG-4 compliant video codec suite, created by 3ivx Technologies, based in Sydney, Australia. 3ivx video codecs were released from 2001 to 2012, with releases of related technologies continuing until 2015. 3ivx provided plugins to a ...

, and all versions of DivX). *

Flash Video Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There ar ...

H.263 H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x fam ...

and VP6 (used by sites such as

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most vis ...

). * H.264/AVC,

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container. ...

WMV Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...

as well as numerous others. ffdshow also decodes audio, such as: *

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, *

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New York * American Aviation, a company from Clevela ...

, * Dolby AC3, * WMA *

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

, and *

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conju ...

formats, among others. The post-processing video filters of ffdshow can be used in video editors such as

VirtualDub VirtualDub is a free and open-source video capture and video processing utility for Microsoft Windows written by Avery Lee. It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression. It uses AVI container format to ...

, by configuring the VFW settings. In these editors, ffdshow can also be used to encode MPEG-4 video compatible with

, DivX, or

x264 x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Histo ...

codecs, as well as lossless video and a few other formats supported by libavcodec.

History

The first versions of ffdshow were published in May 2002, as an alternative to the DivX ;-) 3.11 and DivX 5.02 (which came bundled with Gator) decoders of the time, and as a way to combine the speed and quality of

with popular Windows video players. It continues to support more formats, new and old, as

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vi ...

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 bug-fixes, stability fixes, new features, and codec updates continued. Development of ffdshow tryouts was discontinued in 2012 with users recommended to use

instead.

References

External links

*
LAV Filters
a newer DirectShow codec set based on ffmpeg {{Compression formats Free codecs Free software primarily written in assembly language Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in C++ Video codecs Windows-only free software

Installation and configuration

Format and filter support

History

See also

References

External links