Codec

Codec

Codec stands for Coder/Decoder. Basically it is a piece of software or a driver that adds a support for certain video/audio format for your operating system. With codec, your system recognizes the format the codec is built for and allows you to play the audio/video file (=decode) or in some cases, to change another audio/video file into that format (=(en)code).

For example, when you install Windows to your home computer, Windows installs automatically bunch of most commonly used codec into the system, so you don't have to download them separately from their vendors. Despite that, there are some codecs that are widely used, but not installed automatically by Windows-- most notably DivX, MPEG-2 and in some cases (old Windows versions, like Win95) MPEG-1 codecs.

A listing of codecs follows:

Audio codecs

Non-compression formats

* AIFF - Audio Interchange File Format
* Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF)
o WAV - Microsoft "wave" format (format supports compression, but it is rarely
used)

Lossless data compression

* Apple Lossless
* Audio Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 ALS)
* Direct Stream Transfer (DST)
* Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
* LA (Lossless Audio)
* Lossless Predictive Audio Compression (LPAC)
* Lossless Transform Audio Compression (LTAC)
* Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP)
* Monkey's Audio (APE)
* OptimFROG
* RealAudio Loseless
* RKAU (RK Audio)
* Shorten (SHN)
* True Audio free lossless codec (TTA)
* WavPack
* Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless

Lossy data compression

* General (medium to high bit rate)
o A/52 or AC-3 AC-3 or Dolby Digital A/52
o ADPCM
o AAC Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4)
o ADX
o ARDOR (Adaptive Rate-Distortion Optimised sound codeR)
o ATRAC Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding (Used in MiniDisc devices)
o DTS (DTS Coherent Acoustics)
o FORtune[1]
o MP1 (MPEG audio layer-1)
o MP2 (MPEG audio
layer-2) Layer 2 audio codec (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5)
o MP3 (MPEG audio layer-3) Layer 3 audio codec (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO
MPEG-2.5)
o Musepack
o Ogg - container format (much like AVI) - best known as a Vorbis audio container (below).
o Perceptual Audio Coding
o TwinVQ
o Vorbis
o WMA (WindowsMedia Audio)

* Voice (low bit rate, optimized for speech)
o AMR
o AMBE
o CELP
o DSS
o EVRC
o G.711 (a-law and mu-law/u-law)
o G.722.1
o G.722
o G.723.1
o G.723 (Superceded by G.726)
o G.726 (ADPCM)
o G.728 (LD-CELP)
o G.729 (CS-ACELP)
o G.729a
o GSM
o HILN (MPEG-4 Parametric audio coding)
o iLBC
o IMBE
o QCELP
o SMV
o Speex, patent free
o VSELP



Text codecs

* Ogg Writ



Video codecs

AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is not a codec, rather it is a container format that many of these codec's can use.

Lossless data compression

* CorePNG
* H.264 High Profile supports lossless coding. Implemented by x264
* Huffyuv
* Lagarith
* LCL
* MSU Lossless Video Codec
* TSCC TechSmith Screen Capture Codec

Lossy data compression
* Audio Video Standard (AVS)
* Cinepak
* Dirac
* FORlive[2]
* H.261
* H.263
* H.263v2
* H.264, also known as MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC)
o MainConcept
o Nero Digital
o QuickTime H.264
o Sorenson AVC Pro codec, Sorenson's new implementation
o Vanguard Software Solutions
o x264
* Indeo 3/4/5
* KVCD
* MJPEG
* MPEG-1 Video
* MPEG-2 Video
* MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile Video
o 3ivx
o DivX
o XviD
* MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding is the same as H.264
* On2 Technologies VP3, VP6, VP7
* Pixlet
* RealVideo
* Tarkin
* Theora
* VC-1
* WindowsMedia Video
o ASF (Part of the Windows Media Series)
o WAX (Part of the Windows Media Series)

Download all the required codec in one pack only so that you can play any type of audio/video file on your pc. www.k-litecodecpack.com