List of codecs - Definition and Overview

Audio codecs

Lossless data compression

• APE Monkey's Audio
• Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• Shorten (SHN)
• LA (Lossless Audio)
• True Audio free lossless codec (TTA)
• Lossless Predictive Audio Compression (LPAC)
• Lossless Transform Audio Compression (LTAC)
• Apple Lossless
• OptimFROG
• WavePack
• Windows Media Audio 9 Series Professional Lossless

Lossy data compression

• ?
  • WMA Windows Media Audio
  • DTS DTS Coherent Acoustics
  • Perceptual Audio Coding, used for satellite radio and IBOC digital radio
• General (medium to high bit rate)
  • MP1 (MPEG audio layer-1)
  • MP2 (MPEG audio layer-2) Layer 2 audio codec (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5)
  • MP3 (MPEG audio layer-3) Layer 3 audio codec (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5)
  • AAC Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4)
  • DTS Coherent Acoustics
  • A/52 or AC-3 AC-3 or Dolby Digital A/52
  • TwinVQ
  • Vorbis
  • Musepack
  • ATRAC Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding (Used in MiniDisc devices)
  • Windows Media Audio 9 Series
  • ADPCM
  • Perceptual Audio Coding
• Voice (low bit rate, optimized for speech)
  • Speex
  • GSM
  • G.711
  • G.723.1
  • G.729
  • HILN (MPEG-4 Parametric audio coding)
  • Windows Media Audio 9 Series Voice

Text codecs

• Ogg Writ

Video codecs

• Audio Video Standard (AVS)
• Theora
• Ogg Tarkin
• H.261
• H.263
• H.263v2
• H.264
• Huffyuv
• MPEG-1 Video
• MPEG-2 Video
• MPEG-4 Video
  • DivX
  • Xvid
  • 3ivx
• Sorenson
• Cinepak
• Indeo 3/4/5
• MJPEG
• On2 VP3, VP6
• Windows Media Video 9 Series
  • ASF (Part of the Windows Media Series)
• Pixlet
• KVCD
• VC-1