We have two programs that can save us from the hassle they are VideoLAN and ffdshow.

First off, what is VideoLAN and ffdshow?

VideoLAN(called VLC) is a stand-alone media player which plays almost any video/audio format. It has problems decoding REAL and wmv, but otherwise it does everything.

Ffdshow is similar to VideoLAN, but it is not a media player. It acts like an all-in-one codec, giving any media player (winamp, windows media player, etc) the ability to play video/audio formats that you may not have the codec installed for.

Both programs are based off a project called ffmpeg, which is specially made to decode every format without burdening system resources.

Ffdshow comes in many different builds. I find the best quality and performance builds are made by celtic_druid, or at least distributed by him. I have not heard of custom VLC builds, so I will just use the one on the official site for this review.

Installation / Configuration

VLC is a breeze to setup, and very easy to configure. In fact, configuration is unnecessary with VLC as its default options are all you need. However with ffdshow, if you don't get the main installation options correct, ffdshow seems to overload you with options and configuration stuff. But all you need to get is here. There you can click on any codec you like and change it to libvacodec (ffdshow), xvid (the default decoder for xvid, only applies to videos encoded in xvid or divx) or none (lets windows decide what to use).

Performance

Both ffdshow and VLC pride themselves on less cpu usage than the default decoder, which is very true. FFDshow relies on your current media player, so if that already takes up some serious cpu usage it can't save you there. VLC usually has slightly less cpu usage than other media players, but I doubt you will notice a difference between them. Decoding x264, a high quality beta codec, is very CPU-heavy for both programs.

Usability

The clear winner here appears to be ffdshow. Since it acts like a codec, you don't need to change your favorite medium of watching/listening. It simply takes over the decoding. VLC requires you use its media player. If you like the way VLC is setup, the more power to you. But I'm sure most people would like to keep what they use rather than switch.

Quality / Playback

VLC has a simple method of making video look better. Video > postprocessing then select a number 0-6, 0 being no postprocessing and 6 being the max postprocessing. While ffdshow does give you a weak postprocessing filter, it requires a significant amount of configuration to even hold a candle to VLC's. Seeking through video or audio is something I do often. Audio seeking is almost instantanious with any media player, however, video is different. Videos in lower resolutions seek very quickly, but at higher resolutions, there can be a good second or two delay. On my computer (AMD 4000+,1.5GB ram, 6800) seeking on Jaegarn X HD (1280x720) took a noticeable amount of time on Windows Media player and media player classic. But on VLC the seeking was instantaneous. Results may vary.

Formats Supported

It may seem that VLC wins here, after all, rumor has it that it plays everything! Well that's somewhat wrong. VLC can play many formats, but it can't decode some things well like windows media (.wmv) files. It also cannot decode Real, but who uses that? If you're running windows, ffdshow will let windows handle the decoding of wmv files. VLC, however, supports .mp4 container, which the Finalreality2 trailer was released in. Both have experimental decoding of x264 which works very well. On a side note, postprocessing for x264 does not work well so don't use it.

Conclusion

It is all up to you, but I personally prefer VLC for the ease of use. If you don't feel like switching from your favorite media player, then ffdshow will be perfect to you. These are both great projects from the open source community.

You can try them out yourself by downloading them here.