Codec

• Codec stands for enCOder/DECoder or COmpressor/DECompressor.
• It is a software or hardware that compresses and decompresses image, audio and video data streams.

Codec Types

• There are two types of codecs : Lossy and Lossless.

Lossy and Lossless

• If the decompressed data is the same as the original data, it is referred to as lossless compression, otherwise the compression is lossy.

Why do we need codecs?

• Because video and music files are large, they become difficult to transfer across the Internet quickly.
• To help speed up downloads, mathematical "codecs" were built to encode ("shrink") a signal for transmission and then decode it for viewing or editing.
• Without codecs, downloads would take three to five times longer than they do now.

Where used codecs?

• Codecs used in compressing video, audio and images.
• If you have detail information about video codecs click on this link Codecs for videos
• If you have detail information about image codecs click on this link Codecs for images