FFDSHOW is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. It uses open source codec for video decompression – libavcodec, postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies and original DirectShow filter from XviD – all together – very good combination for better quality and faster decompression.

Positive impressions:
FFDSHOW for decompressing use less CPU power than original DivX codecs, even with maximum post-processing. The post-processing give excellent quality results and allows more configuring than the original DivX codec. Automaticly reduce post-processing if your CPU is getting overloaded. The noise filter adds a rasterising effect to the picture – very useful in most of cases. It includes experimental playback for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files (VCD and SVCD movies).
Used with Vista have amazing video quality of all file types it supports, haven’t seen anything better.

Negative impressions:
MPEG-2 playback can’t play the SVCD clips directly from the CD, it requires video to be extracted on HDD.
When I played videos in PowerDVD 7 DeLuxe it turns out flipped.
On XP color isn’t accurate, the quality isn’t as sharp, rendering is more blocky than Vista.

Conclusion:
Very good video decoder. Use it with Windows and always get/download lastest version (fast fix of bugs).

Features of FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder:

• various compression methods and compatible with all sound formats – Divx+AC3,MP3, or WMA; XviD+AC3 or MP3 etc..
• MPEG 4 compatible (Xvid, DivX 4, DivX 5) using libavcodec or XviD
• Divx 3 compatible, MSMPEG4v2, MSMPEG4v1
• WMV1/7, WMV2/8
• H263, H263+, H264
• HuffYUV in YV12 colorspace
• MJPEG
• MPEG 1
• Theora (not for regular use, format isn’t stabilized yet)
• MPEG 2 by using mpeg2enc code from MJPEGtools project
• all Windows Media Video 9 supported encoders with output to asf/wmv file or AVI
• all common encoding modes: constant bitrate, fixed quantizer, fixed quality, two pass encoding (depends on compressor features)
• for libavcodec and XviD detailed selection of motion estimation method
• minimum and maximum I frames interval
• minimum and maximum quantizer selection, quantizer type and trellis quantization selection for libavcodec
• adaptive quantization (aka. masking) for libavcodec and XviD, single coefficient elimination
• selectable compression of starting and ending credits
• two curve compression algorithms for second pass of two pass encoding – thanks to XviD developers
• second pass simulation: although not very precise, still helpful for tweaking advanced curve compression parameters
• ability to use libavcodec internal two pass code
• image preprocessing with ffdshow image filters (latest ffdshow version must be installed)
• graph during encoding: if your encoding program doesn’t provide one
• B frames support: from one to eight consecutive B frames
• support for MPEG 4 quarterpel and GMC
• selectable interlaced encoding
• decompression

New version of ffdshow is available here: http://www.free-codecs.com/FFDshow_download.htm

Tags | Multimedia, Open Source, Software, Video Codec, Windows