What Are Video Codecs???

it is basically all the different software you need to play videos.you can go to http://www.updatexp.com/sherlock... to check your system for any broken or missing codecs. Codecs are computer programs, or "assemblies" of computer programs, that translate electrically the signals from/between a hardware device (webcam) and an operating system (Windows). The word codec is short for coder/decoder. A CODEC is a COmpression - DECompression software or hardware used to process audio or video signals. (Actually The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: 'Compressor-Decompressor', 'Coder-Decoder', or 'Compression/Decompression algorithm' -- Wikapedia).

A Video Codec relates to video. Some common codecs include MPEG (various variations), DivX, WMV. Some are ubiquitous (DVDs for example use MPEG-2 for video and Dolby and DTS audio codecs for audio) and consumer electronic devices (in this case DVD players and/or A/V receivers) include the necessary codecs to handle them. They are also used on computers and codec packs are available to install them when required to support particular hardware or software.

Codecs are necessary to allow file sizes to be reduced to accommodate limited storage space or bandwidth, and then inflated (decompressed) to play back the stored file. Most codecs use lossy data compression (familar in the audio world through MP3 files -- an audio codec) which always degrades the image somewhat, although in moderation not significant enough to be noticed by the viewer.

Some codecs are better than others, in that they offer less degredation at a constant degree of compression than the competivie formats.

I could go on, but see the Wikapedia entry on "video codec"... it gives an extensive description. Other entries exist for audio codecs and for specific formats if you want to explore in more depth.