Video Codec
/ˈvɪdi.oʊ ˈkoʊdɛk/
noun — "algorithm for compressing and decompressing digital video."
Video Codec is a software or hardware component that encodes (compresses) and decodes (decompresses) digital video streams. The primary purpose of a video codec is to reduce the size of video data for storage or transmission while preserving acceptable visual quality. Compression is typically lossy, meaning some information is discarded to achieve higher efficiency, though some codecs support lossless compression for specialized applications.