We'll discuss some of the most popular codecs and how they're commonly used with different digital video formats. The best video codec for you will depend on your budget and the type of content. If you want to distribute your videos online, use the following recommended video bitrates for YouTube uploads: Video files with high bitrates require fast internet connections, and some can't even be played on mobile devices. Choosing the right video bitrate will affect how and where your viewers can watch your videos. However, it also means that your video file won't be compressed as much.
When you select a higher bitrate, more data can be processed faster, improving your video’s quality. The bitrate you select will have an impact on how the codec you're using compresses your video file.
When using a codec for video compression, you can select the bitrate before compressing your video. The video bitrate is the speed bits are processed over time. Also, make sure your video is ready to go online before putting it through the lossy compression process - if you use lossy compression more than once, there will be a noticeable reduction in the picture quality of your video. Keep in mind that once you compress a video using lossy compression, you cannot revert it to its original state. With lossy compression, you do sacrifice a bit of video quality, but the sacrifice is well worth it because of the versatility you gain with how you can distribute your video content to viewers. Because you can share the video more easily online, lossy compression is generally used more widely than lossless compression. With lossy compression, the algorithm does compromise image quality to a degree, but the resulting video file size will be much smaller. But there’s a catch! Even though lossless compression makes a video file smaller (think reducing file size from 200GB to 50GB), the new file size could still be too large to upload to certain platforms or stream on certain devices. This may make it seem like lossless compression is the clear winner when it comes to lossless vs. Lossless compression is also reversible, so you can return your video to its original state if you need to for any reason. Lossless compression uses an algorithm that reduces the overall size of a video file and makes it easier to work with without damaging the picture quality at all. Some video codecs use algorithms that reduce the file size by as much as 1,000x! In other words, you reduce the file “quantity” without compromising quality.
This ensures that your video file isn't altered in any major way. A codec uses an algorithm that determines the best way to shrink the size of your video while still keeping everything intact. Your digital video takes up much less storage space and loads much faster when accessed online. Thanks to video compression, you can easily distribute video content to your audience. Compression reduces the total number of bits needed to represent your video, which in effect reduces the size of the video file.
Meanwhile, a 4k UHD 2-hour movie can be a whopping 3,400GB! It’s impossible to store and share this size of video files with viewers. We’ve already mentioned that uncompressed video files can take up a lot of space - even a standard definition 60-minute video could be as large as 70GB. After being processed through a codec, your video's playback runs smoothly with much higher frame rates. Codecs also clean video files up and optimize them for playback. Boom: with one click, you can instantly enjoy your fave YouTube videos. Fortunately, you can use codecs to compress video files. Without video codecs, you’d have to wait minutes or even hours to watch any video on YouTube because of the enormous file size. Let’s imagine a world without video codecs: Uncompressed audio and video files can take up a huge amount of storage, especially for lengthy recordings. It decompresses it into the specified video container.