Transcoding, Transrating or Transcontainerization - What do they mean?

If you are into the video delivery space, you'll quite often run into jargons such as Transcoding, Transrating and Transcontainerization. What do these jargons mean? For a novice, it is harder to understand what these jargons mean. I've taken a stab to simplify these jargons for better understa



Transcontainerization - Transcontainerization refers to re-publishing a video in a new container format. For ex., taking an MP4 video and converting it into formats such as Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming format, Apple HTTP Live Streaming format or Microsoft Smooth Streaming format is called trans-containerization.

Let us take for example, you are buying a few oranges and apples and carrying them in a plastic bag to home. After reaching home, you are transferring the oranges and apples from a plastic bag to a plastic basket. You are just changing the container without changing the properties of the oranges/apples. This is similar to transcontainerization - where just the wrappers of the MP4 video is changed. 


Transcoding - Transcoding refers to modifying properties of video such as modifying resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate, and audio/video codec. For ex., converting the resolution of the video from 1920 × 1080 to 1024 × 768 for viewing in different digital displays is called transcoding.

Let us take for example, you are buying a few oranges and apples. Assume that you have the powers of a magician. If you convert an apple to orange (or) an orange to apple, it is similar to Trancoding. Here you are trying to play with the video properties and codecs. 

Transrating - Transrating refer to changing the bit rate of the video without altering other properties of the video. For ex., changing a 1 Mbps video stream to a 512 Kbps video stream is called transrating.


Let us take for example, you are buying a few oranges and apples. Assume that you again have the powers of a magician. If you convert a large apple to a small apple, it is similar to transrating.  You are changing the bit-rate, without modifying the properties of the video. 

Encoding - Encoding refers to the process of preparing video for storage and transmission. For ex., capturing of human actions into digital format using camera or camcorder is encoding.

Well, that is self explanatory. So, no analogies :)