What is the best codec??

[El_Gringo23]

What is he best codec to get maximum compression without losing a lot of quality? It dosen't matter if i need to pay for it or not, I just need to know what it is and where to get it.

Thanks

[liquid217]

well its hard to define the "best" of anything. there are just too many factors. I generally capture with picvideo's mjpg codec. At the higher bitrates it preserves the picture very well. Another good codec is huffuv. It is a loss-less codec, meaning the picture is preserved bit by bit from the uncompressed version. you can think of it to what zip files do to data, as to what huffuv does to video. links to all of these codec's can be found under the tools link on the left-hand side of the page.

[Mirror_Image]

maximum compression without losing a lot of quality?

Can you be exact as to your definition of these two terms:

1. "maximum"

2. "a lot"

[El_Gringo23]

ok...how bout minimum loss of quality. for mgeg-1 movies also.

[zzyzzx]

Try using Huffyvu first but if it takes up too much disk space or your computer drops frames while using it try something like Picvideo's MJPEG instead. I've used both and like both but will probably use MJPEG from now on because I can capture at a higher resoultion with MJPEG (480) vs only 240 with Huffyv. So I actually get a better quality picture using MJPEG even though it isn't lossless.

[tgpo]

I use Motion JPEG A. It looks great; however, the file size won't be as small as it could be.