FFDSHOW Settings Guide

Kaotik

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First of all, most credits for the guide go to Hot Metal and other users of MuroBBS, who were there creating this guide.
I've done some small changes to it myself, too, but they're rather minor, and then there's some additional info added by myself, and of course, the translation.

To get FFDSHOW, go to http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/
What FFDSHOW is? It's a codec, or codec "pack". It utilizes the libavcodecs created for the ffmpeg project, which are also utilized by the likes of VLC (and Mplayer I think?) It plays pretty much everything out there :cool:
In addition it offers a powerful and wide selection of different filters you can use.


I will put out 2 presets here, which you can save to FFDSHOW's "Image Settings" page.
Some of the filters are especially heavy, I will put a note on each, however keep in mind that these settings were made at least fairly powerful computer in mind.

First, couple "all-around" settings which are the same for all presets, and not part of the different filter settings used in the presets.

- On Codecs -page, set every Format that allow it to "libavcodec" unless there's "Incomplete" or "Broken" mentioned by it, except for MPEG2 (and possibly, the WMV-stuff), set Raw video to "All supported"
- On Decoder Options page, set IDCT to "Auto", and Number of decoding threads to match how many cores you have (2 for dualcore, 4 for quad and so on)

Then for the settings themselves, for the presets
All these should be placed on the FFDSHOW's list in the order they're written here (1 above 2, 2 above 3 and so on)
And please, remember that many have different displays and tastes, so you might need to adjust these to suit yours better, but these are quite good base from where to start.

First, for DVD's, assuming you have a DVD player which supports using FFDSHOW as a filter.

1. Blur & NR - Enabled
- Disable everything from the settings, except for Denoise3D and HQ, they sould be enabled.
- In Denoise3D settings, put Chroma to 1.00, Time to 4.00 and Luma to 0.00.

2. Resize & Aspect - Enabled
- Resize on, Multiply by 3 if your computer can handle it, 2 if it can't, or even some specific resolution will do. (The point is to resize the video to be bigger than your viewing resolution, which the video card will then scale it down to. For some reason, this gives you better IQ than just resizing it straight to your native resolution)
- Enable Resize Always
- Aspect Ratio should be changed when needed, if ever, but "Keep original aspect ratio" is a good default
- On Resize & Aspects Settings sub-page, set both Luma and Chroma methods to "Lanczos", and make sure the Lock is enabled. Number of tapos should be set to 2.00, Luma Sharpen to 1.00-1.50 and Chroma Sharpen to 0.00. Enable Accurate Rounding.

4. Deinterlacing - Enabled (Note, this is heavy filter)
- Set it to Framerate doubler, and "no motion estimation - blend images"

All other filters should be disabled.


Then the settings for other videos:

1. Postprocessing - Enabled
- Set the Presets to far right, with Automatic quality control enabled.
- Set Processing method to "Mplayer", and use "Accurate Deblocking" if it works for you, this seems to change from build to build and video to video, for the ones it works, it's great, for the rest.. well, not so good :p Use Level Fix settings if needed, this can however cause over emphasizing of contrast.
- SPP Deblocking is a really heavy setting to use, and broken on many builds too it seems. It should be, however, used on really low quality videos if possible, on higher quality videos avoid this, it gets rid of too many details easily.

2. Blur & NR - Enabled
- Disable everything from the settings, except for Denoise3D and HQ, they sould be enabled.
- In Denoise3D settings, put Chroma to 1.00, Time to 4.00 and Luma to 0.00.
- In case there's too much noise in your video, try rising the Denoise3D settings, Chroma up to 2.00-3.00, Luma up to 1.00-2.00 and Time up to 5.00-6.00

3. Resize & Aspect - Enabled
- Resize on, Multiply by 3 if your computer can handle it, 2 if it can't, or even some specific resolution will do. (The point is to resize the video to be bigger than your viewing resolution, which the video card will then scale it down to. For some reason, this gives you better IQ than just resizing it straight to your native resolution)
- Enable Resize Always
- Aspect Ratio should be changed when needed, if ever, but "Keep original aspect ratio" is a good default
- On Resize & Aspects Settings sub-page, set both Luma and Chroma methods to "Lanczos", and make sure the Lock is enabled. Number of tapos should be set to 2.00, Luma Sharpen to 0.50-1.50 and Chroma Sharpen to 0.00. Enable Accurate Rounding.

4. Deinterlacing - Enabled (Note, this is heavy filter)
- Set it to Framerate doubler, and "no motion estimation - blend images"
- If your video really does need deinterlacing, TomsMoComp with Search effort set to 3 and vertical filter enabled should do the trick

Other filters should be left disabled, but if you're looking your screen from far away, adding some Noise might help it look bit better, some people get really annoyed by it, others don't. If you end up using Noise, I suggest using "New noise algorithm (avih)" or "Mplayer noise", and play around the settings to suit your own needs best, personally, I don't like the added noise, so I don't really know even a good baseline.

Hope this thread gives some help for some people :)
 
3. Resize & Aspect - Enabled
- Resize on, Multiply by 3 if your computer can handle it, 2 if it can't, or even some specific resolution will do. (The point is to resize the video to be bigger than your viewing resolution, which the video card will then scale it down to. For some reason, this gives you better IQ than just resizing it straight to your native resolution)
Depending on playback software graphics cards and drivers, a modern PC is probably just as well off leaving the scaling to WMR9. As far as scaling to a higher-than-output resolution goes, the up-down scaling tend to artificially enhance sharpness at the cost of fine detail. This may look better on a blurry-by-nature CRT, but on a flat panel I can see no advantage.
 
Been looking for a 'for dummies' guide like this. Thanks.
 
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I found the postprocessing doing no good in all settings, fine details get smoothed out.

The most important setting for me is:
Output->Allow output format changes during playback [Enabled]

Otherwise anamorphic AVIs will have the wrong Aspect-Ratio.
 
I found the postprocessing doing no good in all settings, fine details get smoothed out.

The most important setting for me is:
Output->Allow output format changes during playback [Enabled]

Otherwise anamorphic AVIs will have the wrong Aspect-Ratio.

Well it depends a lot, it's still great for those 1-2CD rips imo, but for high quality x265/h.264 etc, it's better off without.
 
Well it depends a lot, it's still great for those 1-2CD rips imo, but for high quality x265/h.264 etc, it's better off without.
Same here. It's wonderful for XviDs(people valuing file size over quality ensures every XviD out there is bit-starved) but disabled for DVDs and x264 HD videos.
 
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I remember tinkering a lot with various settings but now I'm using simpler settings, this plus the xsharpen filter (which really doesn't sharpen much and that's good for me). xvid and others end up looking very good on that 17" CRT.

ffdshowpb8.png
 
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