This page gives brief descriptions of the various compressors (codecs) available in Premiere. Where appropriate, you are referred to page numbers in the book "Premiere with a Passion" by Michael Feerer for additional information. All codecs are used for making movies and are available under one of the COMPRESSION menus.

The available codecs are listed below...

1. VIDEO - A good all around compressor. Good playback speed and relatively fast compression time. (p. 374)
2. ANIMATION - Good for compressing animated movies. Similar in quality and speed to VIDEO. (p. 374)
3. CINEPAK - If you have the time, this compressor provides the best playback performance. It is very slow compressing, but playback is fast. Image quality is good. (p. 374)
4. PHOTO-JPEG - This compressor provides very good image quality, but playback is very slow and compression time is relatively slow. It does, however, create very small, compact files. (p. 375)
5. GRAPHICS - This compressor is primarily for 8 bit still images. (p. 375)
6. RADIUS STUDIO - If your movies will only be played on the Radius using the hardware compression, this is the compressor to use. It is fast compiling and playing back, and the image quality is excellent.

If you are creating your movies for playback on different hardware platforms or different CPU speeds, it is best to use either VIDEO or CINEPAK. If you have extra time to allow your movies to compile, CINEPAK is best. CINEPAK also produces the smallest file sizes of the software compressors. If all your movies will be played on the RADIUS system, then RADIUS STUDIO is the compressor to use. If your movies are animated or computer graphics, consider using the ANIMATION compressor. In most cases, Quality settings of about 75 at 15 frames per second is a good starting point. For faster playback and compression, try a lower Quality setting and frame rate, or consider compressing with grayscale instead of color.

There is also a chart on page 374 that outlines the relative strengths and weaknesses of each codec. The chart is useful to determine at a glance which codec is best for your movie.