Introduction to Video

When it comes to video there is only one real choice of codec. H264 is the new codec on the seen but it is quickly becoming a favourite of both professionals and fans as it presents extraordinarily high quality video with a very small file size, so much so that recent H264 releases have been of higher quality than many commercial DVD releases. Unfortunately H264 is fairly CPU labour intensive and therefore requires 1 GHz + computers to run normal size files so there is still a small market for other Codecs. The other main set of Codecs that are used widely is Sorenson for Quicktime files and DivX or XviD for others.

Due to the large number of Codecs and Containers playback can be a tricky issue for many people but thankfully there is a solution. I strongly recommend the CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) it is a complete codec and player package for windows that is capable of handling just about anything you throw at it, I have been using it for a good while now and I can honestly say it has never let me down. Get it from http://www.cccp-project.net/ or click the banner below.