What does ffdshow actually do?

[Toast B|M]

Okay my problem was solved by ffdshow

http://forums.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18962

Thanks to all the help , I hate all the code packs and i dont like to have anything on my computer that I dont need..for last one year i only have divx and xvid codecs installed and i never had a problem playing ANY movie but this one caught m e.
anyways my question is what does ffdshow do? does it modify the codec (xvid, divx) or its a codec by itself? or it enhances the codecs under discussion?

any answers, urls will be appreeciated?

[Enchanter]

It is a stand-alone decoder capable of decoding many MPEG-4 compression formats, including DivX and XviD. It does not touch any existing DivX and XviD settings.