Codec

Codec

Codec is a device or computer program that can encode and decode a stream of digital data or a digital signal. Originating from the pair CoderDecoder, the term Codec should not be confused with a coding format as it is a program that can read and write files as opposed to a format that is coded to and decoded from. Based on the compression quality codecs can be classified as lossy codecs where quality is reduced to achieve compression and lossless codecs where archiving is done but all the information presenting in original stream of data is retained. There are media codecs which are designed to put special emphasis on certain aspects of a media. For example, a sport video needs better motion encoding while an art exhibit video demands better encoding of color information. The Codec Engine is a set of APIs that we can use to instantiate and run relevant algorithms. Codecs normally come grouped in libraries that contain the codecs any application needs to access different audio/visual file types.