Does media player support Video For Windows (VFW) or DirectShow
 

Hi all

Is there a way to find out if:

- a media player supports Video For Windows (VFW) and/or DirectShow (DSH)
- a codec is fit for VFW and/or DSH

The whole concept of VFW and DSH, and the difference is not entirely clear with me:
- Is it so that VFW is hardware dependent, and DSH is not?
- Is it so that DSH players can play any VFW coded media files, but not vice versa? (if codecs are installed)
- Is it so that VFW is getting obsolete?

Any help would be appreciated!

1. If a media player supports DirectShow, it will support VFW too. I think there are no VFW players currrently available anymore.

2. The majority of the codecs out there are still VFW. The only one i know that has a directshow version is 3ivx, but it still comes in VFW too. Usually it should say so in the documentation of the codec. If a codec is VFW it should show up in the compression dialog box of VirtualDub, as long as the vendor does not prevent from doing so. The *decoders* however are usually DirectShow.

3. VFW and DS are in principle both software dependant. Although it seems that Directshow will take more and more advantage of hardware.

4. Yes.

5. Yes, Microsoft seems to be planning to totally drop VFW. To be honest VFW is a rather old framework. However, some people will tell you that for encoding and editing DirectShow is not that suitable. It is great for playback though.