Video and audio codecs

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Codec is short for Compressor/Decompressor, indicating the software used for compressing/decompressing the video clip. If a codec isn't used, a feature film will take up a lot of space on your hard drive – as much as 30 GB. Such amounts of data are always hard to handle, so there's a lot of sense in compressing the clip. And it actually doesn't take much to boil down the gigabytes to megabytes.

The very best solution is to use our converter that makes nifty MJPEG clips (simultaneously finding scene ends and creating audio graph).

MPEG-4 V2 is also a good solution. This codec is great on all platforms (including Win 7 and 8. Ignore all warnings and install it!)

The Avid MJPEG codec also yields excellent results.

For conversion the same advice applies, but you don't have to worry about audio. Use our internal converter (recommended), VirtualDub, Any Video Converter or Digital Media Converter.

MPEG-4 V2 can be downloaded from http://www.undercut.org/msmpeg4

The Avid MJPEG codec can be downloaded for free at several sites, eg. http://www.downloadatoz.com/codecs/avid-m-jpeg-codec,download.html

Make sure the right codec (for recording only) is chosen on the tab Options/Setup/video configuration/video cache.