Talk:Ffdshow/Archive 1

Archive 1

Not an encoder

The software describes itself as a decoder and its documentation makes no mention at all of encoding. I have anecdotally verified this myself as none of the supported codecs can be used with encoding software. Now, FFmpeg on which it is based may have encoding functions, but ffdshow is not an exhaustive implementation of those libraries. Unless someone can demonstrate otherwise, I am removing the reference to its encoding capabilities. 67.169.183.167 17:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

ffdshow is an encoder, too, which is a well known fact for its users who use it for encoding. I can confirm it, too – the encoding couterpart has been added several years ago to ffdshow (originally, ffvfw was the encoding part, but it was merged with ffdshow). Perhaps you used the original, 5-year old version (which was indeed just a decoder)? See the discussions at forum.doom9.org so that you can see ffdshow is used for encoding, too. —J. M. 19:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and a screenshot of the ffdshow encoder in action:

http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=53761&ssid=1426

J. M. 19:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The confusion seems to be that the stable (old) release of ffdshow is decode-only. The newer version, which is still marked as alpha, has encoding capability. Is there a precedent for this on WP, i.e. do we go by stable releases or latest builds? At the very least, the distinction between formal release features and experimental features should probably be stated in the article so as to prevent this kind of confusion. Ham Pastrami 00:37, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The original "stable" release has been dead for years, not actively developed anymore. All development in the last 3-5 years has gone into the "unstable" builds (which is actually what users are supposed to use, so the terms "unstable" and "experimental" are misleading), plus the new ffdshow-tryouts. So yes, it should be stated in the the article that this is all about the actively developed branch (fork), not the old abandonware. I mean, what's the point of having an article about a dead product... —J. M. 03:58, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

No, the term "ffdshow-alpha" is misleading if it's not really an alpha. That's precisely why it needs to be explained. The paragraph you just wrote is basically what the article is missing. Besides that, the better question, rather than why have an article about dead software, is why the dead software is still there, if it's as dead as you imply. If the "alpha" build is indeed stable for general use, it should have superseded the old build. If you want to get mad at somebody, get mad at the author for not updating his packages. I'm just making observations. Ham Pastrami 20:31, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

What about those internet rumblings that FFDshow comes packed with a trojan or two, any truth to this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.89.235.120 (talk • contribs)

• No, as long as you download official builds from SourceForge. - Sikon 06:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Utilization of GPU built in Video Acceleration features?

Hallo, I'd like to know, and I think it is inportant for the technical quality of the article to mention it, IF FFdshow does use Unified Video Decoder and or NVIDIA PureVideo. As far as I see, it does only use the CPU for decoding, although even old GPUs have build DEcoding acceleration for at least MPEG2. Is that true? The newer implementations (UVD/PureVideo) expand this DEcoding acceleration for h.264/AVC and VC-1. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.56.145.61 (talk) 20:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)