A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder/decoder.
In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size for storing, handling, and transmitting content. The different versions of the photo of the cat on this page show how higher degrees of approximation create coarser images as more details are removed. This is opposed to lossless data compression which does not degrade the data. The amount of data reduction possible using lossy compression is much higher than using lossless techniques.
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high resolution audio. A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity. WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that Microsoft developed to play audio and video on personal computers. It has been a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Pocket PC, and Windows Mobile. Microsoft also released editions of Windows Media Player for classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Solaris, but has since discontinued them.
Motion JPEG is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image.
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files, or character encoding. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better-supported or modern format.
Portable Media Center (PMC) is a portable media player (PMP) platform developed by Microsoft. Announced at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and released in early 2004, it was originally positioned as a competitor to Apple's iPod. All its hard drive-based players use a graphical user interface (GUI) modeled after Media Center, a software portal bundled with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Manufacturers of PMC devices included Creative, Philips, iriver, Samsung, and Toshiba.
ZEN is a series of discontinued portable media players designed and manufactured by Creative Technology Limited. The players evolved from the NOMAD brand through the NOMAD Jukebox series of music players, with the first separate "ZEN" branded models released in 2004. The last Creative Zen player, X-Fi3, was released at the end of 2011.
A portable media player (PMP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory, microdrive, SD cards or hard drive; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media, such as cassette tapes or vinyl records.
A container format or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Notable examples of container formats include archive files and formats used for multimedia playback. Among the earliest cross-platform container formats were Distinguished Encoding Rules and the 1985 Interchange File Format.
The iRiver H300 series are a series of portable audio players developed by iRiver, made up of the iRiver H320 and H340 models. They were first announced on September 22, 2004 replacing the H100/iHP-100. Each can play music, transfer pictures directly from digital cameras and UMS-compatible devices, such as flash drives, and display digital images on a colour screen. In the United States, the H320 initially retailed for $329 and the H340 was $429.
Lyra is a series of MP3 and portable media players (PMP). Initially it was developed and sold by Indianapolis-based Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., a part of Thomson Multimedia, from 1999 under its RCA brand in the United States and under the Thomson brand in Europe. There were also RCA/Thomson PMPs without the Lyra name, such as the RCA Kazoo (RD1000), RCA Opal and RCA Perl. In January 2008, Thomson sold its Consumer Electronics part including the RCA brand and Lyra line to AudioVox. RCA-branded PMPs are still being made today in its domestic market but no longer under the Lyra name. The Lyra was an early pioneer in digital audio players, although in later years most of its output were OEM products.
Yepp was Samsung Electronics' digital audio player brand until Samsung decided to retire most of their family brands in February 2011. From then on, their MP3 players were simply branded "Samsung" worldwide until they discontinued all of them in late 2013. The brand included a wide range of hard-drive based as well as flash-memory based players. The name is claimed to be an acronym for "young, energetic, passionate person".
The Gigabeat was a line of digital media players by Toshiba.
AMV is a proprietary video file format, produced for MP4 players, as well as S1 MP3 players with video playback. There are two different versions of this format: an older one for Actions chips, and a newer one for ALi’s M5661 chip, sometimes called ALIAVI.
The ZEN V and the ZEN V Plus are portable media players manufactured by Creative Technology. The user interface on this player, the same as the one on Creative's ZEN Vision:M, was patented by Creative on January 9, 2005. Creative sued Apple over the use of this user interface; Apple later settled for $100 million.
The Gmini is a series of portable audio and video players released by Archos in 2004 and 2005.
The iRiver E100 is a portable media player developed by iRiver. It features a 2.4" TFT LCD 320x240 colour screen, built-in 1 watt speakers, a line in port and a microSD card expansion slot up to 8GB. The user interface is navigated by using the iRiver "D*Click" scheme. However, the controls are isolated to the lower section of the device's front. There are minimal buttons located on the side of the device including a power button and two-in-one volume bar. There is also a "hold" switch located on the other side of the device.
The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and was formerly also published as ISO/IEC 15444-12, a.k.a. JPEG 2000 Part 12.
XMedia Recode is a freeware video and audio transcoding program for Microsoft Windows developed by Sebastian Dörfler. It can import and export many types of files such as WMV, MP4, MP3, 3GP, Matroska and more. XMedia Recode can convert unprotected DVDs or DVD files to any supported output file. XMedia Recode features a drag-and-drop style interface and uses job queuing and batch processing to automate the task of transcoding multiple files.
