The video is shrunk considerably (compressing) for storage and transmission and later decompressed for viewing.Īt the core, codecs are advanced video compression tools that work on encoding and decoding algorithms.

Ī portmanteau of ‘coder-decoder’ or ‘compressor-decompressor,’ codecs, to distribute a video or audio file for playback, perform the function of shrinking or compressing the raw audio/video data into a more manageable size. In the next 5 minutes, you will be getting all the information you need about video streaming codecs and their role in live streaming. As a professional broadcaster, getting a better grasp of the technology that brings your broadcasts to life makes sense since these codecs are the reason we can so easily stream audio/videos and video chat with our loved ones, even with limited bandwidth. One of the basics of live streaming is getting to know your audio and video streaming codecs better. This will return all options and parameters when encoding with this encode method.Did you know that Netflix users stream 97,222 hours of content every minute, courtesy, codecs? To view more details on an encoder ffmpeg -h encoder=libx264 Libx264 encoder only supports video (V) also provided is the codec.

D = Supports direct rendering method 1 V.

You can also see the encoders and decoders for each codec. Looking at two popular codecs returned, h264 has DEV.LS whilst h265 has DEV.L meaning h265 is missing Lossless compression ability (In this version). hevc H.265 / HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) (decoders: hevc hevc_qsv hevc_cuvid ) (encoders: libx265 nvenc_hevc hevc_amf hevc_nvenc hevc_qsv ) S = Lossless compression DEV.LS h264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (decoders: h264 h264_qsv h264_cuvid ) (encoders: libx264 libx264rgb h264_amf h264_nvenc h264_qsv nvenc nvenc_h264 )ĭEV.L. To list all codecs in FFmpeg simply do ffmpeg -codecs

Think putting many frames and audio together and playing them back or when you skip ahead providing the right data. A codec is the logic to encoding or decoding a media stream, there are many different types with popular ones being H.264, HEVC ( H.265) and MPEG-4.Ĭodecs are different to containers like MP4, MKV and MOV because a codec manages the bitrate, resolution and frames whilst the container organizes and returns the data as sequence.

Video codec types