By Colin Litchfield
What is a codec?
If you’ve used a computer for any period of time you may have heard of the word “Codec”, and you may have also wondered what a Codec actually is. The common acknowledgment of what a codec is, is that it’s a kind of file that are utilized by your computer to play audio and/or video files that have different extension formats such as .avi, .mkv, etc. But there is an exact definition of a codec and what it really means. A Codec is a program that encodes and decodes digitial signals. This can also be called Compressor-Decompressor and/or Coder-Decoder. There are 3 types of codec’s, and each of these has it’s own function. They are Data Codecs, Audio Codecs, and Video Codecs.
The Audio Codec
The audio codecs are used to compress and decompress any audio files, acting as a medium to play the files in many media players such as windows media player. The need for a codec happens when the player is not able to play an audio file because it needs the right codec to decompress and play the audio files. Windows Media Player 11 can play most audio files and supports more audio codecs if need be.
The Video Codec
The video codecs have the same function as the audio codecs, except for use with video files. Because of the growth in technology, data can be stored in digital forms, rather than earlier technology when data was stored on tapes, as an analogue signal. The new advancement has given birth to video codec’s, and now you can use them to watch videos in different formats.
The Data Codec
Data codec as the word describes refers to compression/decompression of data with the help of data codecs as this process is not automatically handled by Quick Time Media operations. The quick time player automatically compresses/decompresses the audio and video tracks with the help of image and audio codecs but is unable to compress/decompress sprites. Therefore, the main use of data codec is to compress/decompress sprites, arbitrary blocks and 3D models.
So in simple terms. A codec is something that works with your media player to help encode and decode a digital signal or a digital data stream.
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