Definition: video codec

(1) (video enCOder/DECoder) Software that compresses and decompresses a digital video signal. MPEG, Windows Media Video (WMV) and H.264 are examples of popular codecs that compress and decompress digital video. The video codec may also be a hardware circuit. See codec examples, codec, MPEG, Windows Media formats, QuickTime, H.264 and VC-1.

(2) (video enCOder/DECoder) A hardware circuit that converts analog video (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) into digital code and vice versa. The circuit may provide only the A/D and D/A conversion, or it may include a compression algorithm to further reduce the signal such as defined in #1 above. See codec.