Drivers and Codecs are extra pieces of software that enable either driving a device or encoding a file into a specific form required by a device.A Plug-in is an add-on piece of software that adds additional functionality to a program.
DRIVERS
A driver is a piece of software required to make an external device (also
called "peripheral" or sometimes "dongle") function with a PC.These
will be necessary when using a new video screen or graphics card,MP3
players,printers MIDI
device,TWAIN
device or any device which is new to your PC system. The driver
allows the PC to communicate with the device in a manner which suits the
device and acts as a kind of interpreter,changing computer instructions into
those which the device understands.
CODECS
A codec is means by which a process of encoding takes place.
This maybe in the realm of Audio or Video. The result of the codec is to
produce a file format or data stream that has the required encoding.
For instance,audio on a PC can conventionally be stored as
.wav but a codec is required
when translating .wav to .mp3 for
use with MP3 players.
Within Windows Sound Recorder are several codecs allowing translation to differing file formats to store ampled audio,which may have come directly from CD or from the Mic or Line in inputs on your sound card,as can be seen from the picture MP3 files can be made directly from Sound Recorder as long as the codec is present that renders MP3 files.
Note that Media Player 9+ is capable of generating Mp3's directly from a CD and again the required codec must be present. If you look in TOOLS/OPTIONS and choose the COPY MUSIC tab you will find the drop down list which switches from .wma to mp3.
PLUG-INS
Plug-ins add functionality to a program by inserting a piece of software
into the program you maybe using. Common uses for plug-ins are to add musical
capability to a sequencer package or add paint brush effects to a Paint program.
Plug-ins mean that in essence a program is endlessly capable of being updated
and may not become out of date quite so quickly as it may have been. Plug-ins
may also help with program compatibility by adding the capability to read
a file format that the program
was not initially capable of reading.
See Also: File Extensions ,File Compression,Driverguide.com,Windows codecs,Download.com