Contents:
- Introduction
- Compression as an Informed Decision
- How Encoding Works
- Exchanging Encoded Information
- What Does This Matter for Moving Image and Sound Archivists?
- What Does This All Mean for Moving Image and Sound Archivists?
- Ten Recommendations for Codec Selection and Management.
This short ‘primer’ provides an explanation of what codecs are, how they are used, and what their selection and application means to archives. Also provided are 10 recommendations to help archivists in the selection and management of codecs in an archival setting.
This short primer is written for the starting digital archivist and is not meant as an exhaustive technical report on codecs. Its analogies and illustrations are particulary helpful in explaining the relationship between encoding, compression and codecs.