Technical Terms and Definitions

CODEC - Software

  1. In communications engineering, the term codec is used in reference to integrated circuits, or chip that perform data conversion. In this context, the term is an acronym for "coder/decoder." This type of codec combines analog-to-digital conversion and digital-to-analog conversion functions in a single chip. In personal and business computing applications, the most common use for such a device is in a modem.

  2. The term codec is also an acronym that stands for "compression/decompression." A codec is an algorithm, or specialized computer program, that reduces the number of bytes consumed by large files and programs.
