VC-1 - technical definition

(Video Codec-1) An SMPTE standard for compressing digital video, introduced in 2006. Officially known as SMPTE 421M, Blu-ray, HD DVD, Xbox 360 and Windows Vista were the first products to support it. Based on the commonly used DCT method employed by MPEG codecs as well as specifications in Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 codec (WMV9), more than a dozen companies contributed to its development.

A major feature of VC-1 is its support for compressing interlaced video natively without having to convert it to progressive frames beforehand. Providing faster decoding than H.264, VC-1 was typically judged best in subjective quality testing with other codecs. See codec.