Duel said:
Thanks!
I have the aspect ratio of 16:10 configured fine but how can I improve the quality of the video? Also, it starts automatically when I play certain file types through WinDVD but how do I make it do so for VLC and WMP?
On my Samsung Syncmaster 930BF the picture quality was great but on this Dell every video is like an old VCD!
If you go to the codecs tab, and on the Format column, go to Raw Video and put that to all supported. What this does is it allows ffdshow to post process any video which has been decoded. For example, if the WinDVD mpeg2 decoder is default, whenever you play a mpeg2 stream, ffdshow should pop up. You can choose to decode mpeg2 with libavcodec or libmpeg2 by selected the decoder type next to mpeg2 in the same menu.
THere are a ton of filters in ffdshow and you won't probably be using them all so you can go to show / hide filters to remove them from the menu. FYI, i have half of the filters hidden.
Also, if you select a filter from the left hand side menu, you will notice small arrows next to the text of the filter pop up. These are important as they move the priority that the filters will be applied. The filters nearer the top are applied first (if ticked) and the filters at the bottom are applied last. You can move the priority up and down by pressing on the small arrows. An example of priority would be to resizing and noise reduction. If say you resize to 1920x1200 first then apply noise reduction, the noise reduction would have to work on a larger area (higher CPU load) than it would have if you did noise reduciton first. Also, the noise reduction could blur some of the details that you sharpened whilst resizing the image.
Improving the quality of the video is all a bit subjective as people prefer different filters and different settings. However, improving the video quality can be broken down in to three parts (IMO):
1. Sharpening.
There are a few main ways to sharpen in ffdshow. The first way (and my preferd option) is to upscale the image. To do this if you go to the Resize and Aspect option and tick all the necessary options that you want. Importantly go into the settings bit of Resize and Aspect. Make sure that the method is Lanczos and then change the number of taps and the sharpen sliders to what you prefer. Secondly, there is the sharpen filter itself. I've always found unsharp mask to be the best one of these but again, you should experiment to see what you find the best. There's a DScaler filter that peforms sharpening but i never use it. Lastly, there is the WarpSharp filter. This is broken in some versions, but it is excellent for sharpening animation (i only use it for animation)
2. Noise Reduction
This is good for noisy dvd sources in particular. If you go into the Blur and NR option and denoise 3d and tick HQ. You should then set the three settings to your own tastes.
3. Colour
If your finding it dark it movies, you can adjust the colour, brightness and gamma etc through, Levels, Picture properties or Overlay (if you have this setting).
Hope this helps you get started. ffdshow is very powerful once you know what it can do...
I think however that the ghosting and blurring can be avoided by changing to another image mode. It certainly wasn't a constant problem and I was fiddling around with settings for ages. Can't be arsed to go and confirm my theory though! 
