Some color shifting is seen in some formats Lossy codecs are great for compressing data that needs to be sent via e-mail or uploaded to the internet. Lossy codecs, on the other hand, lose a small amount of information, but can compress material into a much smaller format.
They reproduce video exactly as it is without any loss in quality. Lossless codecs are just like they sound. You’ll find thousands of Codecs that are grouped under a variety of umbrellas. Then you decide which one is the best fit your needs. Now that you know what codecs are, let’s look at the variety of codecs out there.
The hardware compresses your video and audio data into a manageable size for viewing, transfer or storage. Unless you’re a broadcast engineer, however, you will rely on your computer or device to select a codec. The codec also reverses the function and turns digital video and audio signals into a playback format. This happens in real time, either at the point of capture or the point of playback. Codecs can also be used in a physical piece of hardware, like your camera, turning incoming video and audio into a digital format.
The codec encodes, compressing the data for storage or sending, then decompresses for playback or editing.Ī codec is a computer code that performs its function whenever the file is called up by a piece of software. What do they do? In the simplest terms, because video files are so large, you need a way to make them smaller. Let’s start at the beginning with a simple definition.Ĭodec is really the meshing of two words: coder and decoder (co/dec). If you can understand certain terms, you can better decide which one fits your needs. Because there are so many of them, and it is difficult to tell the difference between them, we put together a quick look to help you get started. If you spend any time editing or outputting video, you will come across the term Codec.