multimedia, video Tips, How-To Articles, Buying Guides & Reviews at BrightHub.com
RSS
 View all Hubs
See what's in...

Compression of Digital Video

Article by Andrea Smith (968 pts )
Published on Jul 25, 2008
A brief explanation of what Video Compression is and how it affects your video.
32 views

Compression

Video Compression, by film school definition, is a reversible conversion of data to a format that requires fewer bits, usually performed so that the data can be stored or transmitted more efficiently. The size of the data in compressed form (C) relative to the original size (O) and is known as the compression ratio (R=C/O). For image compression, the fidelity of the approximation usually decreases as the compression ratio increases.

What this means is

Compression allows for easier transportation and storage of a file. Sometimes streaming video is of poor quality.This may be an indication that your file may have to be compressed. Also, the compression ratio can change upon reaching it’s destination depending on where and how the file is played.

Compression techniques used for digital video can be categorized into three main groups:

1.) General Purpose Compression techniques can be used for any kind of data.

2.) Intraframe Compression techniques work on images.

3.) Interframe Compression techniques work on image sequences rather than individual images.

The third technique is the most popular, and most commonly used by those in the digital film community.

Lossless Compression

Lossless Compression is the best Type to utilize. When a file is compressed in a lossless format, 100 percent of the data is still there, much like when you zip a document, the actual file gets smaller, but all the words are still there when you unzip it. You can save lossless video over and over without losing any data, hence the name lossless. Compression will simply minimize that data into a smaller space. Lossless compression saves less space because you can compress data only so much before you have to start discarding information. A good way to save data is to use Lossless compression


Bright Hub - Science & Technology Articles, Buyer's Guides, How-To Tips and Software Reviews
About Bright Hub | Contact Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy | ©2008 Bright Hub Inc. All rights reserved. Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape