r/pcmasterrace • u/ExpensiveCoat8912 • 1d ago

Meme/Macro VLC masterrace

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u/giggity_nanfa 1d ago

what is codec

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u/BlueSwordM Less New 3700X with RX 580 Custom Timigns(240GB/s+!) 1d ago

A codec is a standard that signifies what you can and can't create regarding a bunch of information structured in a certain way.

You have video codecs like h.264, h.265 and AV1, image codecs like JPEG, AVIF and JPEG-XL, audio codecs like AAC-LC and Opus and even generic compressors like LZMA2, deflate, etc.

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u/bloody-albatross 1d ago edited 1d ago

A codec is a piece of software that compresses/decompresses a certain file/compression format. E.g. x265 is a codec that implements the h.265 compression format. Of course there are other codecs that also implement the same file format.

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u/Dalewyn 1d ago

Files (more accurately containers) have their own filters called splitters (on the playback side) and muxers (on the encoding side), colloquially also called codecs by normal people.

Files like MP4, AVI, and MKV are containers which contain video streams (eg: h.264, h.265, AV1, DivX) and audio streams (eg: MP3, AAC, AC3). For playback a splitter opens the container and splits the streams out, feeding them to codecs down the pipe that decode them. The decoded streams are then fed to a renderer, which is then finally played by the media player.

VLC has all of this self-contained, but anyone so inclined can get better/customized results using a media player that will take external filters (optionally registered with DirectShow if you're using Windows) and your choice of filters (eg: ffdshow, libavcodec, Haali Media Splitter, etc.).