View source for Lossless and lossy

'''Lossless''' is a way of compressing data which is fully reversible -- e.g., does not "throw away" data. A losslessly compressed file can be used to create an exact copy of the source file.

'''Lossy''' is the opposite of lossless. A certain amount of data is discarded; how much is usually dependent upon a quality or bitrate setting of the codec.  This makes the file (or stream) much smaller that lossless compression, but reduces the [[quality]].  It is impossible to [[transcode]] from one lossy format to another without further degrading quality.

==Lossless Codecs==
* [[WAVE]] (WAVE is technically a container format, but usually contains lossless PCM audio.)
* [[FLAC]]
* [[WAVPACK]]
* [[HuffYUV]] video codec

==Lossy Codecs==
* [[MP3]]
* [[Vorbis]]
* [[AAC]]
* [[AC3]]
* [[WMA]]
* [[Speex]] 
* Most [[codecs|video codecs]] 

[[Category:Glossary]]