Codecs

Various Video / Audio Compression Packages

These help your video and audio players play media.  The more you install the less likely you you won' t be able to view that video file someone sent you.

XviD   [download page]   [Home Page]

xvid screenshot

Hence, Xvid can somewhat be seen as a ZIP for video. But unlike ZIP, Xvid is not lossless. That means that a video after compression and decompression with Xvid won't be identical to the original source. Typically however, a difference to the source is visually imperceptible.

Xvid is Free Software and released under the GNU GPL license. This means that the source code of the software is publically available and programmers are allowed to make modifications to the code. Also, redistribution of Xvid is permitted but only under the terms of the GPL license.

So the GPL grants recipients more freedoms than it’s common with other software. Therefore, and due to its very high image quality that has been approved in independent tests conducted by third parties the Xvid codec has gained great popularity in the recent past and has become the codec of choice when it comes to exchanging digital video.

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Ogg Vorbis   [download page]   [Home Page]

ogg-vorbis screenshot

Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competitive class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.

The bitstream format for Vorbis I was frozen Monday, May 8th 2000. All bitstreams encoded since will remain compatible with all future releases of Vorbis.

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FLAC   [download page]   [Home Page]

flac screenshot

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation, has a well documented format and API, and has several other independent implementations.

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ffdshow   [download page]   [Home Page]

ffdshow screenshot

ffdshow is DirectShow and VFW codec for decoding/encoding many video and audio formats, including DivX and XviD movies using libavcodec, xvid and other opensourced libraries with a rich set of postprocessing filters.

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MediaCoder   [download page]   [Home Page]

mediacoder screenshot

MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time and at this moment, it already has millions of users from 170+ countries all over the planet.


Features In Brief


Typical Applications

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More Titles

AC3Filter - AC3Filter is a high quality free DirectShow filter designed for real time audio decoding and processing.

Theora - Theora is a free and open video compression format from the Xiph.org Foundation. Like all our multimedia technology it can be used to distribute film and video online and on disc without the licensing and royalty fees or vendor lock-in associated with other formats.

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