Video Format Standards (aka Codecs)
A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital
data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of
'compressor-decompressor' or, more commonly, 'coder-decoder'. A codec
(the program) should not be confused with a coding or compression format
or standard – a format is a document (the standard), a way of storing data, while a codec is a program
(an implementation) which can read or write such files. In practice
though, "codec" is often used loosely to refer to formats. In
this case, when referring to formats/standards some codec examples include
H.264, DV/DVCPRO, ProRes, Sorenson,
and MPEG-4.