Monday 21 May 2012

Data Compression

What is data compression?

Data compression is particularly useful in communications because it enables devices to transmit or store the same amount of data in fewer bits, There are a variety of data compression techniques, but only a few have been standardized.

What is a data compression ratio?

Data compression ratio, also known as compression power, is a computer term used to quantify the reduction in data-representation size produced by a data compression algorithm.

 {\rm Compression\;Ratio} = \frac{\rm Compressed\;Size}{\rm Uncompressed\;Size}

Why is data compression an important technique for the online world?

Data compression is an important technique for the online world as it helps decrease the the consumption of expensive resources such as hard drive space.

What is the difference between Lossy and Lossless data compression?

Lossless compression recreates a compressed file as an identical match to its original form.  All lossless compression uses techniques to break up a file into smaller segments, for storage or transmission, that get reassembled later. Lossy compression can't be used to compress anything that needs to be reproduced exactly.

Which method offers the greatest compression ratio?

Lossy.
Lossy data compression video codes generally provide the greatest compression ratio.

The video can be compressed at 100:1 ratio while audio and still images can often be compressed at 10:1.

The compression rate of lossy is about 5-6% while Lossless compression is about 50-60%

Why is human psychology and perception an important factor in methods of Lossy compression?

This is because in lossy compressions, very little of the information from a file is still there. Without the deception of how the human eye sees the difference of information, the file would be very different from the original. If we allow our mind to do so would be able to the errors in a lossy compression.

Name Lossy file formats for audio, still image and video format.


Audio:

MP3 - .mp3

MPEG-1 - .mp2

WMA - .wma

Still Image:

CPC - .cpc

DjVu - .djvu .djv

JPEG - .jpg .jpeg


Video:

DV - .dv .dif

MPEG-1 - .mpg .mpeg .mp2 .mp3 .mpa

MPEG-2 - .mpg .mpeg .mp2 .mp3 .m2v

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