What is a codec and what is it for?

We continually see this technicality and most people don't know what it is. Inside, we will explain what a codec is and what it is for.

We have to place ourselves in the context of audio and video to give an introduction to what a codec is. It is usually more related to video, especially with the reproduction of it on our PC. Our intention is to clear all doubts and explain what it is and what it is for. Are you ready?

Index of contents

What is a codec?

If we break down the word, you will see that it is a compound term: " coder " and " decoder ". The first one talks about encoding and the second one about decoding. It is a code that performs its function when the operating system or software demands it. Furthermore, this code converts digital audio and video signals into a playable format. It can be used in a photo camera or on a smartphone, for example.

Therefore, a codec encodes and compresses the data of a video or audio file so that it is faster to transfer or takes up less space. When we reproduce or edit this file, it is unzipped.

Therefore, it must be understood that it is a compound word because it does two functions: compress and decompress. Compress to make the file more portable and unzip to provide all the data in the file.

This code is of great importance in videos, since there are codecs that compress the file too much, which causes a loss of quality in its reproduction. On the other hand, we find others whose loss of quality is negligible.

Codec types

As you may have guessed, there are many different codecs that offer advantages and disadvantages. In my humble opinion, it is not that there are worse or better, but that each one adapts to the needs of each person. As my father would say, "there is everything in the vineyard of the Lord"

Next, we are going to reveal the most common ones to give you an approximation of each one.

MPEG

It is one of the most famous and common for all. Its acronym stands for Moving Picture Experts Group and we find many MPEG formats that have been derived. For starters, the MPEG-1 Layer 3 or MP3 which is an audio compression standard. MP3 is a very small and lossy format, but it is a standard because it gives very good quality at laughable sizes.

Normally, an MP3 file is usually 128 kbits per second, about one eleventh of original audio in CD format. Lossy codecs would be as follows:

• MP3. WMA. OGG. AAC (Apple).

Lossless codecs are these:

• FLAC. APE. ALAC (Apple).

You may be wondering now why not use lossless codecs? Because the size of the files are tremendously large, which makes their transfer or portability difficult. A song in FLAC format can be 30 MB or more. In fact, disks in this format usually take up more than 500 MB.

There are streaming services such as Tidal that face Spotify, offering high definition audio quality, that is, without loss. That said, for those who do not have Hi-Fi headphones, it will not matter because they will find it difficult to appreciate the difference between FLAC and MP3. That difference can be seen with headphones or high-fidelity speakers.

MPEG-4

Another codec that is widely used is MPEG-4 for video. It uses much better compression than MPEG-1 and its quality is really good. Within this format, there are many codecs, such as H.264, which is the option to encode video for Blu-Ray. What has made it famous is the great flexibility it offers, both for high and low resolutions.

MKV

We are not dealing with a codec as such, but rather it is a container that "contains everything": several audio tracks, several subtitle and video tracks in the same file. This is the great reason why it is so downloaded and used by the rest of the mortals.

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It has overtaken AVI and MP4 because it offers really good quality in surprisingly small sizes. Matroska is not a compression format, but a codec is used to encode the audio or video of a file and then store everything in the same file: MKV.

For example, QuickTime (Apple) is a container like Matroska.

ProRes

It is a widely used codec, but not by all users, but by professionals. It was called Apple ProRes and was used in Apple products. We can find it present in various formats, such as RAW, a "raw" format that preserves all the information in the photos, for example. This format is used by professional photographers when they take a photo in RAW.

This allows them to use software to modify or retouch the photo, such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

WMV

Finally, we find the legendary Windows Media Video , a codec that has been famous for its use in Windows. Practically, it is not used due to the appearance of other more practical formats. Initially, the goal was to compress files for online broadcasts. In this sense, FLV has been more useful.

It is not a bad format at all, just the opposite. What happens is that other much more interesting formats have emerged for the final consumer.

So what codec do you need?

The one that suits your needs, plain and simple. There are people who do not care if the file is very heavy because what they want is a lossless reproduction. On the other hand, others prefer a more portable file, giving them no loss of quality.

In this way, we conclude that the best codec in the world does not exist, but rather the most suitable for the user.

We hope this post has been helpful to you and you have understood what this code is and what it is for. If you have any questions, you can send them to us by commenting below.

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