Troubleshooting - Codecs
A codec is a small piece of software that compresses or decompresses a media file, be it audio or video.
In Muvizu terms, this basically means when you render out a video, a codec will compress the video file into a readable format for media playing software to read and play. A codec can also reduce the file size of the video created.
There are literally hundreds of codecs in use today and they all do different things. Some focus on speed over compression quality, others prefer compression over speed. Some are free, some are for a fee. Most you can download from the Internet. Quite a popular bunch of codecs come as a package in the form of K-Lite, which is downloadable for free, and it covers the bases in that it gives you most of all the popular ones and is a good start before going deeper into the world of Codecs and rendering.
Codecs also need to be of the right bit type. For a 64bit version of Muvizu:Play, 64bit versions of the video codec are needed. The video editor or other software being used to prepare videos for import, might be 32bit, in which case 32bit versions of the codecs are needed to work with the video in those packages. Also, if a 32bit version of Muvizu:Play is being used then, 32bit video codecs will be needed.
If you want to find out some more about video codecs, you can visit Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codec
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| K-Lite | K-Lite is a good all round pack containing most codecs in common usage today. It's a one stop shop really. |
| Lagarith Video Codec | Lagarith is what's called a 'lossless' codec. This means that it will render a video with very little loss of quality. As such, it gives you quite a large file size, but if it's quality you are after, this is the route to go down. |
| Xvid | Xvid is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices. Xvid strikes a good balance between file size and quality. |
| VideoLan | VideoLan or VLC is a media playing software program that allows the playing of most if not all video / audio files I've ever come across. I highly recommend getting it! |
| MJPEG 32bitMJPEG 64bit | MJPEG is a video format where each frame is compressed as an individual JPEG image. You can find it being used within QuickTime, consoles such as the Playstation 3, and browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari. How to use MJPEG with Muvizu |
To change the codec in Muvizu, go to the Make Video tab on the top menu bar and when the new window appears, click the Advanced tab. From here you have a codecs drop down list, that if you picked a suitable resolution size, will display all available codecs to render from.
