The MSU Lossless Video Codec is a video codec

Video codec

A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video. The compression usually employs lossy data compression. Historically, video was stored as an analog signal on magnetic tape...

 developed by the Graphics & Media Lab Video Group of Moscow State University

Moscow State University

Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...

. It was designed to provide space-effective lossless video compression

Lossless data compression

Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. The term lossless is in contrast to lossy data compression, which only allows an approximation of the original data to be reconstructed, in exchange...

. MSU currently has the second best compression ratio when compared to many other lossless video codecs, with the better result shown by YULS

YULS

YULS or YUVsoft's Lossless Video Codec is a lossless video codec developed by YUVsoft. It was designed to produce highly compressed lossless video. Compared to many lossless video codecs, YULS has the best compression ratio.- Releases :...

 codec by the same developers.

Description

MSU Lossless Video Codec is available as a library for DirectShow

DirectShow

DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...

 framework, which provides multimedia interfaces on Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It can be used from such applications as VirtualDub

VirtualDub

VirtualDub is a video capture and video processing utility for Microsoft Windows written by Avery Lee.It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression...

 or Adobe Premiere. Possible input formats are RGB24, RGB32, YUY2, YUYV and YV12.

The codec is available free of charge

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

 for non-commercial use. the commercial license

Commercial software

Commercial software, or less commonly, payware, is computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes.Commercial software is most often proprietary software, but free software packages may also be commercial software....

 is unavailable. The source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 of codec is unavailable.

Regardless of its name the codec has several lossy modes.

Release history

Version	Date	Changes
0.6.0		new compression algorithm implementation UI UI UI or Ui may refer to:* An alternate symbol for the international unit * Eurocypria Airlines, IATA airline designator* Unemployment Insurance* The United Illuminating Company* United Ireland* Universal indicator* Universities Ireland...  cleanup
0.5.8		improved Windows 98 Windows 98 Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...  support
0.5.6		improved VirtualDub support
0.5.2		YV12 support Adobe Premiere support speed settings possibility to avoid P-frames maximum I-frames configurability VirtualDub jobs support
0.5.2		YV12 support Adobe Premiere support speed settings possibility to avoid P-frames maximum I-frames configurability VirtualDub jobs support
0.2.4p		Windows 98 support
0.2.4		Initial public release