FFDShow is a directshow filter. I believe the tray utility is a direct link to the property pages. This would get applied in real time. Effects will not be a problem, resizing could be problematic, but I don't know for sure. I haven't used ffdshow in a long time, i found it to be more of a problem than it was worth. Currently, I use the vmr9 resizing algorithms, nvidia decoder (best for mpeg2 by far) and the divx/xvid decoder, and i am very happy with my image quality.