A LOT of people always ask me: What ARE all those darn CODECs? What do they MEAN and DO? Well, I found a really helpful resource at the Discreet website: Here, they have provided FREE answers :
http://www.discreet.com/support/codec
At this site, you can see the many of the following codec definitions: Architectures: MPEG, NetShow, Quicktime, Quicktime VR, DirectShow, Microsoft Netshow, Windows Media, Video for Windows, and Real Systems. CODECs: QuickTime's "Video" Codec, QDesign Music Codec, QDesign Music Codec (QDMC), VP3, Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video Codec, Photo JPEG, M-JPEG, MPEG-2, MP3-MPEG layer 3 audio, MPEG-4, QuickTime's Apple "None" Codec, Portable Network Graphic(PNG), PureVoice Codec, QDesign Music Codec, Cinepak for QTVR, Graphics Codec for QTVR, Photo JPEG for QTVR, RealAudio, RealVideo 8 with Scalable Video Technology, Sorenson Video, QuickTime "Animation" Codec, Cinepak, ClearVideo, QuickTime "Component Video", DV (DV25, DV50, miniDV, DVCPro, DVCAM), escape videostudio codec, Graphics Codec, H.263, IMA, Indeo 3.2, Indeo Video, Interactive (v4,5.) Cross platform : Optimizing Video for CD-ROM, Cross Platform Multimedia Development; Notes on Variable Bitrate (VBE) So just log in and learn.
Quick Tips: As for what AVI codec is the absolute best for quality and file size? QuickTime-Animation tends to have good quality and will give you lossless RLE compression with alpha channel support. For cross platform, TGA image file sequences will support 32 bits, but the file sizes are often quite large, and you will still need to render TGAs out to get a viable video file. If you use the various lossy-codecs (DV, MJPEG, MPEG, Sorrenson, Divx etc.) you can often experience generational loss and artifacts that are sometimes undesirable, especially when combined with each other. Uncompressed AVI is no good because it doesn't even do RLE lossless compression. Autodesk used to distribute an RLE AVI codec with 3d Studio MAX, but it didn't support alpha. Note that many of the Video for Windows applications also don't support alpha. At the Discreet website, you can find WHICH do support alpha.
Regards from Denmark,
Jack Pfeiffer