Everything You Wanted To Know About Codecs And Why They Matter

If you’ve done any video work in your life, there is more than a slight chance that you were staring at Adobe Premiere (or Avid, Or Final Cut) export screen and drooling a bit while you were trying to understand what the heck all those dials on the screen mean.

David Kong just release what I would as the best primer to codecs I have ever seen.

David covers everything from what codecs are (compression and decompression); what is the difference between a codec and a container; what are the pros and cons of using each codec and touches a bit about his workflow.

While there is not a single codec that you can choose and forget about it, there are several reasons to prefer a codec for different stages of a project.

Luckily, David pulls frames into photoshop to break down each concept which I find really helpful. Here is the complete agenda:

• What a codec is – And how it differs from a container.
• Different types of codecs – And why I frequently use 4 different codecs on a single project.
• Bit Depth – What it means and why it matters.
• Chroma Subsampling – 4:4:4, 4:2:2, and 4:2:0, and when it becomes an issue.
• Spatial Compression and Blocking – One of the most common artefacts you see with normal work.
• Temporal Compression – Long-GOP codecs, inter-frame compression, and ALL-I codecs.
• Lossless vs. Lossy compression – How image compression differs from data compression.
• Bit Rate – How to calculate bit rates and the differences between kbps/kBps/Mbps/MBps.
• Raw – Briefly, the difference between Raw, compressed, and uncompressed (this could have been a 40-minute tutorial on its own!)

Another video discussing the practicals of using codecs and how to face the dreadful export screen coming soon.

[How Codecs Work | David Kong via philipbloom]