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) syst ...

in the MPEG-4 ASP (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 formats, 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 ...

2.0, runs on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

, 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. Instead, after installation of ffdshow, compatible DirectShow or VFW 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 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 Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...

, and

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...

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 vid ...

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

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 ...

(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 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 mo ...

). * 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 contai ...

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, * Dolby AC3, * WMA * FLAC, 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 conj ...

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. Histor ...

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 vid ...

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