On the phones and laptops and websites of today, consumers aren’t really thinking about what format their videos are in or what compression algorithms they’re using (though the back-end developers most definitely still are). In those early days, every last byte mattered in terms of bandwidth or storage space, much more so than it does now-for that reason, codecs and their various technicalities were talked about a lot more too. These codecs and associated formats started to become much more widely used in the 2000s as computers and internet connections started becoming capable of working with serious amounts of video. Xvid is open source and available to use for free, which is a key part of its history: It was originally developed as a rival to the proprietary, not-free DivX, which is a term a lot of older video nerds will be familiar with. Xvid is based on the MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile compression format, on which codecs can be built (when we said there were extra complications we weren’t going to go into, this is one of them). ![]() With all that in mind, an Xvid file is therefore a video file that uses the Xvid codec-it doesn’t determine the file type or the extension you’ll see on the file, but rather how the video data is compressed. The term MPEG-4 for example, actually covers a whole range of standards that include a video format, video codecs, and more besides-you can see a full list and detailed explanation of each part of the name here. This can all quickly get confusing, especially as shorthand and abbreviations are used extensively. A great video codec will keep file sizes low while keeping the video quality high, which is what Xvid aims to do. The term codec is short for compression-decompression-it controls which bits of data are saved and which are cast off. The choice of codec determines various aspects of the video: Primarily, its quality, which then affects its file size. ![]() It’s actually even more complicated than this, but we’ll leave it there for the purposes of this article. A video file format such as AVI can support several different codecs. So what’s the difference? The format (or the container) sets certain standards for a video, including how it can be played, how audio and video get stored, how extras such as subtitles are handled, and which specific codecs are supported. Remembering Enterprise: The Test Shuttle That Never Flew to Space ![]() These Winning Close-Up Photos Show Life That's Often Overlooked
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