codec is best used on animation, although it does all right on video as well. It primarily compresses long lines of identical horizontal pixels (which is why it's good for animation). At 100% the codec is lossless. Animation also has an alpha channel.
BMP
Used for still images when exporting in the BMP format. Does minimal compression. Inappropriate for video-based movie playback.
Cinepak
Commonly used for video movies that require CD-ROM playback. Very slow compressing, but decompresses fast on low-end processors. Good choice for streaming.
Component Video
A high-quality compressor. Good for capture on AV computers and as intermediate storage format. Low compression ratios. Larger files. Not good as a delivery format.
DV - NTSC
Used with Digital Video cameras manufactured in the U.S. and Japan.
DV - PAL
Used with Digital Video cameras manufactured in Europe.
Graphics
Good for 8-bit graphics files, usually better than the Animation compressor in 8-bit, but is generally slower to decompress than Animation.
H.261
Designed originally for video conferencing offers very high compression ratios. Good for low data rates and for streaming live data
H.263
Very high compression ratios. Works optimally at window sizes of 352x288, 176x144, or 128x96. (Movie windows will be resized to one of these sizes.) Good for low data rates and Good for streaming live data.
Intel Indeo Video R3.2
Cross-platform compressor, primarily designed for Windows. Use to compress video on Windows that will be decompressed on a Macintosh.
Used to decompress files made with certain hardware Motion-JPEG cards when the card isn't available, or to compress in a format that can be played by certain hardware Motion-JPEG cards.
Motion JPEG B
Used to decompress files made with certain hardware Motion-JPEG cards when the card isn't available, or to compress in a format that can be played by certain hardware Motion-JPEG cards.
None
Good for capture only. Does almost no compression. Results in very large files. You can use this for image or animation or video with an alpha channel.
PNG is an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel for transparency. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits per component (up to 48bit images for RGB, or 64bit for RGBA)
TGA (Targa®) format is designed for systems using the Truevision® video board and is commonly supported by MS-DOS color applications. Targa format supports 16-bit RGB images (5 bits x 3 color channels, plus one unused bit), 24-bit RGB images (8 bits x 3 color channels), and 32-bit RGB images (8 bits x 3 color channels plus a single 8-bit alpha channel). Targa format also supports indexed-color and grayscale images without alpha channels. When saving an RGB image in this format, you can choose a pixel depth and select RLE encoding to compress the image.