What is a Codec as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2014-05-07
·
977 words · ~4 min read
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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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being able to enjoy online services like us Netflix Hulu and Pandora because you
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for a subscription by using offer code Linus so check that out today thank you
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guys for watching don't forget to like and share this video if you liked it
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