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from Wikipedia the word codec is a portmanto of coder decoder or compressor

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decompressor and it's a device or computer program capable of encoding or

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decoding a Digital Data stream but let's put that in real people terms that the

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average computer user can understand shall we first what we typically mean by

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Digital Data stream is audio or video content that is stored in a format that

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is easily read by computers or other electronic devices that means digital

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files made up of zeros and ones rather than analog media like vinyl records

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next we need to disambiguate the term codec because depending on whether we're

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referring to a hardware chip or a piece of software it can actually have fairly

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different meanings let's start with coder decoder Hardware when the term is

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used this way it usually refers to audio gear rather than video and a codec

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contains both a DAC and an ADC within

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one package allowing it to convert sound

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to a digital file and then allowing it to interpret digital files and turn

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those back into sound with as much Fidelity as possible some losses occur

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during both of these conversions however which leads us well into the more

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widespread use of the term codec software codecs these are computer

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programs that take the original Source video or audio data and pack it up in a

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specific format that adheres to a documented standard that will allow it

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to be easily interpreted by other devices or pieces of software that are

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capable of utilizing the the same codec but why would you want to do that you

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might ask I was trying to play a movie on my computer and it said I didn't have

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the codec installed and it was a pain in the patoo why can't everything just be

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sent in its original form or at the very least why can't everything use the same

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codec great question in a perfect world

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we would never compress or convert anything because aside from the

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inconvenience and I alluded to this before most codecs are what is known as

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lossy which means that we're losing some of the Fidelity of the video or audio

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recording when we convert to them unfortunately though in the real world

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the logistics of uncompressed media files are a nightmare a 10minute HD

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video that you download from YouTube might be a couple hundred megabytes

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whereas a 12bit raw file of the same length and resolution can be easily over

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60 gigs try streaming that kind of data over your internet connection lossless

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codecs are a way around this degradation of quality but compared to lossi codex

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their file sizes are still very large and and or they can be very processor

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intensive to encode and decode so the most common solution is to use a lossy

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codec at high bit rate that is more data per second in the Stream if you want

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high quality playback without files that are so large you can't store them or

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easily send them anywhere but there's no one right answer some codecs are best

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for high quality While others maintain better playback on unreliable

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connections While others still are designed to keep latency or delay very

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very low and that is why we need a wide variety of audio and video codecs that

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are optimized for different uses the last thing I'll touch on is containers

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an example is MKV or. Avi these are basically just easily recognizable

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wrappers that contain a number of media streams uh for example video audio uh

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navigation menu and some subtitle files now many people equate containers with

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codex because there are file types like

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MP3 or JPEG that act as a container but

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can only contain a single file type so

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that's where the confusion comes from regular containers by contrast can

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contain media files that utilize a wide variety of different codecs and if all

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of this is still pretty confusing and you just wanted an answer to like how to

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play your media files don't worry there's an easy fix you can download VLC

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media player which contains most of the codecs you'll need on a daily basis or

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if you don't like VC you can install pccp Codec Pack which installs media

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player classic and a wide variety of different codecs on your system so you

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basically won't have to think about this anymore all right so now with all this

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talk about videos maybe you'd like to enjoy some sweet onlen videos except oh

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wait pesky Geo restrictions and blackout zones might prevent you from actually

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being able to enjoy online services like us Netflix Hulu and Pandora because you

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happen to live in a region that doesn't allow those Services good thing Hotspot

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guys for watching don't forget to like and share this video if you liked it

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