Codec? What the hell kind of word is codec?
Well, it’s a contraction of the words “Compression” and “Decompression” (in much the same way modem is a conjunction of “Modulator” and “Demodulator”, but that’s another long, boring story). When you watch a video on your computer, a codec is being used to play it back.
ProRes is the name of a nifty codec Apple came up with – it squishes the file size, but keeps the visual quality more or less intact. It comes with Apple’s pro software tools, but if you’re a puny amateur wanting to play back a movie that uses a ProRes codec, you’re out of luck. Until now*. Thanks to the wittily named “Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0”, anyone can enjoy the soothing effect of many, many images displayed in rapid succession.
* Actually until last August, which was when Apple published this plugin.
