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Encoding turns audio, video and images into a compact form for storage and delivery, and decoding turns it back into something you can watch or hear. Nearly every practical decision is a trade between quality, file size, encoding time and compatibility.

Read these pages in order if you are new:

  1. Encoding basics: what codecs, encoders and containers are.
  2. Terminology: the words you will see everywhere else on this wiki.
  3. Lossless compression: how data shrinks without losing anything.
  4. Lossy compression: where information is thrown away, and why it can still look and sound right.
  5. Psychovisual encoding: why encoders optimize for what people see, not for simple error measures.
  6. Video artifacts: recognizing blocking, banding, ringing and other compression damage.
  7. High dynamic range: PQ, HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.

When you are ready to encode something, continue with the guides, starting with a first FFmpeg encode.