Media Compression

 

Hello everyone,

 

In today’s blog, we will further explore the area of practical digital media production. We will look at how media compression works and why it is important for the quality and delivery of your digital media artefact. I’m going to explain some concepts with the information I have gathered in the videos I have watched and some sites I have visited for more information about today’s blog.

 

Now, what is media compression? Well like file compression, the goal of media compression is to reduce file size and save disk space. However, media compressions algorithms are specific to certain types of media, such as image, audio, and video files. (Media Compression Definition, 2021)

 

What is video compression? Well, video compression is all videos are a combination of images and audio. Each individual image that makes up a video is called a frame. We usually have between 25 to 30 frames displayed in a single second of video. This is known as the framerate.

More frames (or a higher framerate) mean higher quality video, but more frames also mean a bigger file size. Large file sizes can be a problem because those videos take up a lot of space and use a lot of internet bandwidth. Therefore, live streaming video may often have slightly higher compression and lower framerates than other online videos – they need to get them to you quickly and the fastest way to move files across the internet is to make them smaller! For the same reason, most streaming services like YouTube will automatically compress video files. (Video – Week 9 – IDM 2021, 2021)

 

There are two types of audio compressions, there is lossy compression is by far the most popular format because it allows for much smaller file sizes. You are probably familiar with MP3, which is a popular lossy audio compression format. This type of compression generally relies on something called “perceptual coding”. Basically, it tries to only remove the bits that the human ear won’t notice are missing in the first place. (Video – Week 9 – IDM 2021, 2021)

 

And lossless compression is a way of compressing music into a file that, when played back, is identical to the original. (Video – Week 9 – IDM 2021, 2021)

 

Codec is a piece of software needed for audio and video compression. It is used to compress and then decompress the content (compressor-decompressor). These are video compression algorithms that allow us to reduce the size of a file while maximizing video quality. A codec is like a ‘key’ or set of instructions for compressing and decompressing a file in a specific way. For it to work, but the creator and the end-user must have the same codec (or set of instructions) on their device. You might have seen an error message pop up on your computer before when trying to play a video that told you the codec was missing – therefore you need it! (Video – Week 9 – IDM 2021, 2021)

In conclusion, it is important to use all these elements when creating video content!


Thanks for tuning in!

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