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Understanding codecs

Audio and video content can consume a lot of bandwidth on a network when it is streaming. By compressing the content, it can be broadcast over common Internet bandwidths. You can compress content by applying compression algorithms to the data, taking into account the desired output quality and available bandwidth. Before the stream is played on a player, it is decompressed using decompression algorithms. These compression and decompression algorithms are called codecs.

Codecs are designed to compress a stream to a certain bit rate. The target bit rate determines the amount of compression applied. Codecs that do not compress source content as much produce content that usually sounds and looks richer and more dynamic, but requires more bandwidth to stream.

The following list provides more detailed information about the codecs available to you when using Windows Media Encoder profiles:

For more information about Windows Media compression technology, see the Windows Media page at the Microsoft Web site.


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