This page discusses the technical details of a variety of production video codecs. The following table lists video codes alphabetically by first known FourCC.
| FourCC(s) | Document | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 8BPS | 8BPS Codec | Description of the 8BPS codec used to compress planar RGB video in Quicktime files. |
| ASV1, ASV2 | Asus v1/v2 [HTML],
[Postscript], [text], [LyX] |
Description of the Asus v1 and v2 algorithms, very simple DCT-based codecs. |
| CRAM, MSVC, WHAM | Microsoft Video-1 | Description of a very old and rather simple video codec from Microsoft. |
| CVID | Cinepak | Description of the venerable vector-quantizing Cinepak codec. |
| CYUV | Creative YUV | Description of Creative Labs' own custom YUV format. |
| CYUV, CLJR, PIXL, VIXL, VCR1 | Simple YUV Coding Formats | This document describes a variety of simple YUV coding formats including Creative YUV, Cirrus Logic AccuPak, ATI VCR1, and Miro/Pinnacle Video XL. |
| DIV3, MP41, MP42, MP43, WMV7, WMV8 | Microsoft MPEG-4/Windows Media Video | This document describes the inner workings of Microsoft's series of MPEG-4 video codecs. This includes MS MPEG-4 v1, v2, v3 (a.k.a. DivX 3), WMV7, and a preliminary description of WMV8. |
| FFV1 | FFV1 codec [HTML],
[Postscript], [text], [LyX] |
Description of the FFV1 lossless video codec which originated in the ffmpeg project and is based on arithmetic coding. |
| HFYU | HuffYUV | Description of the efficient Huffman-coded YUV format. |
| IV31, IV32 | Intel Indeo 3 | A few details of the Intel Indeo 3 coding format. |
| MSZH, ZLIB | LCL Codecs | Description of the Lossless Codec Library technologies, formed around open compression techniques. |
| QPEG, Q1.0, Q1.1 | Q-Team's QPEG | Description of the QPEG 8-bit codec. |
| rle, qdrw | Apple Animation (RLE); QDraw | Apple's RLE algorithm used in Quicktime files and designated by a lowercase 'rle'. Also covers the QDraw format found in Quicktime files. |
| RLE | Microsoft RLE | Microsoft's run length encoding scheme used in BMP and AVI (and even ASF) files, taken from Microsoft's own documentation. |
| RPZA | Apple Video | Description of the Apple Video (RPZA) codec, a computationally simple block-based codec used in Quicktime files. |
| SMC | Apple Graphics | Description of the Apple Graphics 8-bit block-based codec used in some Apple Quicktime files. |
| SP5x | Sunplus JPEG Codecs | This document contains details about the Sunplus brand of JPEG codecs. |
| SVQ1 | Sorenson Video 1 | Description of the Sorenson Vector Quantizer #1 video format used in Quicktime that took the world of downloadable movie trailers by storm in 1999. |
| TSCC | TechSmith Screen Capture Codec | Description of a simple lossless codec used for screen capture and animation applications. |
| ULTI | Description(s) of IBM's Ultimotion codec. | |
| VP31 | VP3 Format | Description of the bitstream structure of On2's VP3 codec streams and the process used to decode the format. Also, see description of Theora codec. |
| VP60, VP61, VP62 | VP6 Overview (PDF, 271 KB) | This is a link to a whitepaper that gives some details about On2's VP6* series of codecs. |
| VP70, VP71, VP72 | VP7 Overview (PDF, 176 KB) | This is a link to a whitepaper that describes surface details about On2's VP7* series of codecs. |
| Xxan | Origin Xan Codec | This document covers the video codecs used in certain Origin games, notably the later Wing Commander titles. |