ffdshow

[twinfrey]

I was just wondering if ffdshow is worth downloading and using. What exactly does it do for your videos?

[HtV]

It can function as a decoder for most (if not all) kinds of formats. It can decode mpeg2 but I don't think that's recommended. Besides all that it has a lot of filters you can use to enhance your video and/or audio output. So it has a lot of options but it has a tendency to get in the way of other decoders and it can be a bit hard to make it do what you want or make it not do what you don't want it to do. But it's a nice and very popular "program". Good luck.

[twinfrey]

Do you think that it would be better not to download it at all if I just want to use it for MPEG-2 decoding?

[JonnyCam]

It's not a very good MPEG2 decoder really.
Can be good for post-processing like deinterlacing etc - but there are other free mpeg2 decoders out there.

FFD is quite resource hungry, so if you want to use it, you'll need a decent CPU

GPL mpeg decoder works well for me. It's tiny (the installer is 260k) and doesnt interfere with any other parts of the PC. (and free)
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/gplmpgdec)

Thanks