Audio compression, how it works


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Audio compression, how it works

Audio compression
Audio compression

audio compression

 

audio compression
audio compression

 

Audio compression technology refers to the application of suitable digital signal processing technology to the original digital audio signal stream (PCM encoding), without losing the amount of useful information, or under the condition that the loss introduced be insignificant, reduce (compress) its code rate, and also called compression encoding.

It must have a corresponding inverse transform, called decompression or decoding. The audio signal can introduce a lot of noise and some distortion after passing through a codec system

Audio compression technology refers to the application of suitable digital signal processing technology to the original digital audio signal stream (PCM encoding), without losing the amount of useful information, or under the condition that the loss introduced insignificant, reducing (compressing) its code rate, and also called compression encoding. It must have a corresponding inverse transform, called decompression or decoding. Audio signals can introduce a great deal of noise and some distortion after passing through a codec system. The advantages of digital signal are obvious, but it also has its own corresponding disadvantages, ie increased storage capacity requirements and increased channel capacity requirements during transmission. Taking a CD as an example, the sampling frequency is 44.1KHz and the quantization precision is 16 bits, so a stereo audio signal for 1 minute needs to occupy about 10M bytes of storage capacity, that is, the capacity of a CD turntable is only about 1 hour. Of course, the problem is even more pronounced in the world of much higher bandwidth digital video. Are all these bits necessary? The study found that there is a large redundancy in the direct use of the PCM code stream for storage and transmission. In fact, sound can be compressed at least 4:1 under lossless conditions, that is, only 25% of the digital amount is used to retain all the information, and the compression ratio in the video field can even reach to several hundred times. Therefore, in order to use limited resources, compression technology has received much attention since its inception. The research and application of audio compression technology has a long history, like A-law coding, u-law is a simple almost instant compression technology, and has been applied in ISDN voice transmission. Research on speech signals has been developed before and has matured, and has been widely used, such as adaptive differential PCM (ADPCM), linear predictive coding (LPC), and other technologies.


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Compression audio encoding Part 3

Compression audio encoding Part 3

Audio  Compression

I often hear what is called Hi-Res Audio. The sampling frequency is said to be 96 kHz or 192 kHz, which is over 48 kHz, the number of quantization bits is 24 bits, and the limit (high range) of human hearing is about 20 kHz, but it expresses frequencies higher than that. It will be. It is the same bit rate as the image from a long time ago. .. ..
By the way, it seems that dogs can hear up to 60 kHz and cats up to about 64 kHz.

Hi-res audio example
Sampling frequency Number of quantization bits Number of channels bit rate Frequency that can be expressed
192 kHz twenty-four 2 9.216 kbps 96 kHz
192 kHz 16 2 6,144 kbps 96 kHz
96 kHz twenty-four 2 4.608 kbps 48 kHz
96 kHz 16 2 3,072 kbps 48 kHz
48 kHz twenty-four 2 2,304 kbps 24 kHz
Considering the limit of human hearing (about 20 kHz), according to the sampling theorem, 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz is a sufficient frequency, but what about all of them? .. ..
In my case, I cannot distinguish the high resolution range, but it should be able to reproduce the discarded frequency at 48 kHz to 96 kHz, and when the number of quantization bits is in the 24-bit range, the sound pressure (dB) is a bit. Feels like I’m going up (?) (It’s just a story from my ears).
I’d like to make a comparison if I get the chance, but I don’t think I can tell by ear without a proper regenerator (like an expensive analog amp).

Is it time for cats and dogs to get verified in the acoustic industry? .. ..

Compression audio encoding Part 2

Compression audio encoding Part 2

audio compression

16-bit monaural PCM bit rate (for audio) (example)

Sampling frequency Number of quantization bits Number of channels bit rate Comments
32 kHz 16 1 512 kbps Super Wide Band
24 kHz 16 1 384 kbps
16 kHz 16 1 256 kbps Broadband
8 kHz 16 1 128 kbps Narrowband

Sampling rate
If you check the web, there are explanations like the sampling required to convert analog waveforms to digital conversion. For example, it shows how many samples of an audio signal input from a microphone are taken per second and digitized. The larger the sample, the greater the range that can be recorded. When an analog waveform is digitized, the frequency that can be expressed is half the sampling frequency (sampling theorem). For example, with a sampling frequency of 48 kHz, it can be expressed up to 24 kHz. At 8 kHz (narrow band) and 16 kHz (wide band), which are often used for audio, you can only hear up to 4 kHz and 8 kHz, respectively. The higher the sample rate, the higher the bit rate.

Sampling theorem
It is a very simple explanation, but it can express up to half the sample rate. When sampling a signal, if the interval is small, it can be restored close to the original signal, but if it is too thick, it cannot be restored (I would like to write a little more detail when I talk about signal processing or other time ).

44.1 kHz
Why is there a poorly separated rate of 44.1? .. ..
Isn’t the technician deliberately wearing an annoying watch to prevent music CDs from being easily copied? I heard something like that. When I searched, it seems this happened (?) Due to the convenience of an old PCM recorder. In this age, it is difficult to know what 44.1 kHz is in development. The 44.1 kHz ↔ 48 kHz sampling conversion is a headache. For example, USB audio (USB audio device class) exchanges data at 1 ms intervals. In the case of 48kHz, the data is 48 samples, but when considering 44.1kHz, it will be 44 samples (x9) and 45 samples (x1) in 10ms. If a sample of 45 samples is misled (tentatively), it will be 44.0kHz. I think it’s more like that with voice and music, and the human ear is mostly misleading (just my personal opinion).
However, the objective evaluation method will soon come to an end. For example, you can clearly see that you were fooled by a sine wave (sine wave) (maybe you are unexpectedly on the market).

Number of quantization bits
Sampling had to take a value in the direction of time (discretization), but quantization had to take a value in the direction of amplitude. The range that is possible to display the volume of the sound, which is heard often, “dynamic range 96 dB” means that the number of quantization bits is 16 bits and the music signal is played in the range of 0 to 65535 I can do it. The number of quantization bits is also called the bit depth or bit depth.

Bitrate
In communication, it indicates how many bits of data are transferred per hour and is generally expressed in bps (bit / s) of how many bits are transferred (processed) per second. If it is small, the size when saving as a file is small and there is space on the transmission line for communication. For example, when an audio (1 channel) is compressed to 1/3, the 3 channel audio can be sent at the same bit rate. Excuse the old story, but considering from the age of analog communication (analog mobile phone), digitization + compression will be able to support multiple calls with the same radio wave.

compressing using audio encoding

When compressing using audio encoding (AAC, MP3, etc.), the compression rate is determined by the bit rate at the time of encoding.

Audio Compression

Specifically, if you set a low bitrate, the compression rate will be high and the file size when saved will be small, but what is the bitrate for the original sound source (PCM) without compression in the first place?

If you save it as PCM, the sound quality of the original sound will be obtained, but it can be a little inconvenient to save it without worrying about the file size. Also, depending on the application, I think the original sound size has enough memory capacity and the communication speed is correct. Therefore, I would like to write about the sample rate and bit rate that are often heard in digital audio.

The bit rate of digital audio is determined by the sample rate, the number of bits assigned to a sample (number of quantization bits), and the number of channels (stereo, monaural, etc.).

PCM bit rate (uncompressed) = sample rate x number of quantization bits x number of channels
As I wrote a bit last time, file containers like wav and mp4 format have this information as the header, so the application can see the header and play it. The compression rate of the encoding is determined by the bit rate specified at the time of encoding for this PCM (uncompressed) bit rate.
For example, as many of you know about music CDs, with 44.1 kHz stereo, this is the next bit rate.

Music CD bit rate: 44100Hz x 16bit x 2ch (stereo) = 1411.2kbps
When encoding this with MP3, AAC, etc., you will naturally specify a bitrate less than 1,411.2 kbps. For example, when encoding at 256 kbps, the compression rate is approximately 18% and the file size is 1/5 or less, assuming the original sound is 100%.

Encode 256 kbps music CDs: 256 kbps / 1,411.2 kbps = approximately 18%
Generally, the sample rates of audio devices actually connected to a PC are 48 kHz and 44.1 kHz for music, 16 kHz and 8 kHz for voice, such as microphones and headphones, and 32 kHz, 24 kHz, 22.05 kHz, etc.

The bit rate of PCM (uncompressed sound source) with 16-bit quantization bits is as follows.

Stereo (for music) PCM 16-bit bit rate (example)
Sampling frequency Number of quantization bits Number of channels bit rate Comments
48 kHz 16 2 1,536 kbps
44.1 kHz 16 2 1,411.2 kbps Music CD
32 kHz 16 2 1,024 kbps
24 kHz 16 2 768 kbps
22.05 kHz 16 2 705.6 kbps

Audio compression for music lovers

Audio compression for music lovers

Lossy compression

 

the truth about high bitrate lossy compression

lossy compression

In the opinion of most people, the word music lover is most often associated with a person who not only loves and collects music, but also appreciates high-quality music, and not only in artistic and aesthetic terms, but also the quality of the recording of the phonogram itself. Just think, a few years ago, an audio CD was considered the standard for music quality, whereas a computer, even in dreams, could not compete with the quality of a CD. However, time is a great joker, and he often likes to turn things upside down. It would seem that quite a while, a year or two passed and … that’s it, the CD on the PC went into the background. Don’t ask “why?”, You know the answer to this question yourself. Everything is to blame for the revolution in the world of computer sound: audio compression (hereinafter referred to as audiolo compression which means lossy compression to reduce the size of the audio file), which made it possible to store music on disk hard, lots of music! In addition, it was possible to exchange it over the Internet. New sound cards have been released, capable of almost “squeezing” studio quality out of a piece of hardware that seems useless in terms of music. Today, even having a computer that is not very smart in performance, having bought a Creative SoundBlaster Live! and remembering that since Soviet times there is a good amplifier and good acoustics, you will get nothing but a high-quality music center, the sound of which is inferior only to very expensive audio equipment (average or even the highest Hi-Fi category ). Add to this the general availability of music files and you understand that you have the power in your hands. And then there is a revolution, and you understand that a compact disc is no longer so convenient, you are fascinated by something completely different: the magic “MP3” signs. You cannot eat or sleep; you are faced with the seemingly insoluble “chicken and egg” question: how to “squeeze” and, most importantly, how to “squeeze” …

This is where I will help you. This article is the beginning of my new series of informational materials on music on the computer. For over a year developing OrlSoft MPeg eXtension and maintaining an extensive database of MP3 files, I have accumulated a great deal of research on audio compression. It is these studies that I will try to share with you. Many articles have been written on audio compression by different respected authors, so I will try not to write what I can easily find in other sources of information. I would like to put my position on the subject we are considering simply and clearly. We will not consider audio compression to be as compact a tool as possible put audio information on your hard drive (so that you can record so many hours of music there). Yes, compression allows you to record music more compactly, but my goal is to minimize quality loss by converting “pure” audio to compressed audio. This is why only high bit rates and qualitatively compressing encoders are considered in these modes. So it is much more convenient to work with compressed audio – instant access to any track from any album, convenient software for playback. And, of course, the financial issue has not been forgotten either.

Of the audio compression formats that exist today, in my opinion, three deserve attention: MP3 (or MPEG-1 Audio Layer III), LQT (as representative of the MPEG-2 AAC / MPEG-4 family) and a Completely new OGG format (Ogg Vorbis) developed by a group of enthusiasts:

MP3 is by far the most used of these (mainly because it is free). Let me remind you that it was thanks to the MP3 format that the victorious procession of compressed audio took place. However, as often happens with pioneers, little by little it is losing ground and giving way to new and better formats.
The second format, LQT, is a representative of a new direction of audio coding algorithms, a representative of the AAC family. This is a fairly high quality, but commercial and highly classified format.
OGG became widely known to the public this summer and is currently developing rapidly, soon (with the launch of the Encoder and Decoder) it should beat MP3 with better sound quality with smaller file size.

What is the compressor and how does it work?

The compressor, together with the equalizer, is one of the most important and most used processors in professional audio, but its operation is not always so intuitive and knowing how to master the compression technique sometimes requires years of experience. In this new article we begin to explore this fundamental processor.

What is the compressor for?

First of all, let’s start to see what the compressor’s function is: to reduce the dynamic range of an audio track, that is, to decrease the distance in volume between the weakest signal and the strongest signal. Initially created to optimize recording on magnetic tape and to avoid saturation of the input stages, the compressor is still used today during recording and mixing. Reducing dynamic range also allows us to keep multiple tracks in the mix, such as a voice, for example, always at the same volume throughout the song so that they are not dominated by the other instruments in the most crowded sections, as well as to avoid Output saturation.

Compressor

Back to basics: what is the compressor and how does it work

The controls

Now let’s see in detail what the various compressor controls are and what they are for:
— Threshold: or threshold, expressed in dB, indicates the point beyond which the compressor begins to operate.
— Ratio: is the compression ratio and indicates how much the signal will compress when it exceeds the Threshold. For example, with a 2: 1 ratio, each signal that exceeds the threshold will be halved at the output, that is, every 2 dB at input 1 will be returned at the output.
— Make Up Gain: This is the output of the compressor and is used to recover the volume lost due to compression.
— Attack: expressed in milliseconds is the time it takes for the compressor to start once the signal has passed the threshold.
— Release: always expressed in milliseconds, it indicates the time it takes for the compressor to stop compression once the signal has returned below the threshold.
— Gain reduction meter: it is not a control but a visual indicator, led or pointer, which informs how much the signal is compressed, through a scale in dB.
— Bypass: shuts down the processor, making the signal pass through the machine without alteration.

With the advent of digital and accessories, we can find controls that not all hardware compressors have:
— Knee: indicates the type of curve at the point where the compressor begins to operate, which can be abrupt (Hard Knee), soft (Soft Knee) or various intermediate values.
— Automatic: sets the time control to which it refers (attack, release or both) automatically, depending on the input signal (program dependent).
— Sidechain eq or External Sidechain: Sidechain is the signal that drives the compression circuit, where in most cases it is the signal itself to compress, but sometimes it can be a version of the input signal with different equalization, for example without low frequencies, so that they don’t start the compressor too soon. Or it can be an external signal, such as the one used on the radio where the speaker’s voice signal drives a compressor on the background music signal, so it automatically turns off when it starts to speak (Ducking), or Classic Speaker Use to activate the compressor on various instruments in the mix or the Master Buss.
— Mix: used to mix the compressed signal with the original signal. This way, you can use Parallel Compression directly on the compressor, without having to use two mixer tracks (one for the dry signal and one for the compressed signal).
Back to basics: what is the compressor and how does it work

Compressor

Compressor or limiter?

What is the difference between a compressor and a limiter?

Essentially, the compression ratio: over 10 dB ratio, the processor is considered a limiter. A separate case is the Brickwall Limiter, a compressor with immediate attack and a compression ratio of infinity to 1, so that no signal can exceed the Threshold. It is mainly used on the master buses so as not to exceed 0dBFS on the output and then send the converters to clips.

Usage examples

As we already said, the compressor is used to keep the volume excursion under control. One track in the mix: in this case, using a fairly fast attack, slow release and not too aggressive ratio, allows us to compress the signal constantly and transparently, that is, without making your intervention feel excessively.
The compressor can also serve to emphasize the attack of a percussion instrument: in one case, for example, by setting a medium slow attack.

Audio normalization or compression

The function of a compressor is to reduce the dynamic range of the signal, that is, the level difference between the strongest and weakest signal parts.

Why compression or normalize?

At the time of analog, the limited dynamics of the main musical supports (vinyl, audio and video cassettes) did not allow to reproduce the dynamics of a classical, jazz or even rock orchestra in the case of the audio cassette. Therefore, the signal was compressed to avoid distortion in the transmission medium.

audio compression or normalization

Now that the music is converted to 16-bit or more, recorded in digital format, and then streamed to CD / DVD or downloaded, the dynamics of the media is enough to faithfully reproduce the dynamics of almost any orchestra. The old technical limitations have disappeared, therefore compression is no longer essential.

However, whatever the musical genre, some sources (voices) are compressed almost systematically. The goal of modern compression is therefore to optimize sound recording, either to get closer to reality or, conversely, to create a less faithful but denser, more controlled, more powerful sound, etc., or even a sound. totaly new.

And to do all this, the compressor is satisfied with a simple principle: it reduces dynamics by attenuating the signal level when the latter exceeds a given threshold level.

Level settings

– Threshold (threshold level, in dB)

This parameter determines the threshold level from which the compressor is triggered. As long as the input signal level remains below the threshold, the compressor does not start and no treatment is applied. As soon as the source signal exceeds the threshold level, compression is applied.

– Ratio (compression ratio)

The ratio determines the amount of level reduction applied to the part of the signal that exceeds the threshold level, the rest of the signal is not processed. Depending on the compressor, the ratio can vary from 1: 1 to Inf: 1. Quésaco?

Set up a compressor

With a 1: 1 ratio, no compression is applied, the level of the input signal is equal to that of the output signal. With a ratio of 2: 1, the level of the signal portion that exceeds the threshold is divided by 2 in the output signal. With a 3: 1 ratio, it is divided by 3, etc. When the compression ratio is infinite (Inf: 1 ratio), the compressor behaves like a limiter: the output signal never exceeds the threshold level, regardless of the input level.

Therefore, the compression intensity applied to the signal is a compromise between the threshold and the compression rate setting:

The lower the threshold, the larger the compressed signal portion.
The higher the ratio, the greater the level reduction applied to the signal portion above the threshold.
Depending on the compressors, you may find other parameters, for example, an input level setting instead of the threshold, or a gain setting (also called the offset or output level) that amplifies the signal to compensate for the drop in level resulting from compression.

Time settings

– Attack (attack, in ms)

Attack corresponds to the time the compressor needs to reach the given ratio when the signal level exceeds the threshold level. A quick attack of a few milliseconds triggers strong compression as soon as the signal level exceeds the threshold; With a slower attack, the compressor passes the first transients of the signal peaks, keeping one side alive and well cut.

Set up a compressor

– Launch (launch, in ms and s)

Release corresponds to the time the compressor needs to return to the 1: 1 unit ratio when the source signal falls below the threshold level. A quick launch of a few tens of ms allows the original character to stay alive. Slower relaxation improves instrument resonance and reverberation, but can cause compression of the first peak transients when the latter are close together.

– Knee (literally knee!)

The Knee parameter determines the increase in compression, that is, the transition between the compression ratio of the unit (1: 1, no compression) and the compression ratio set to ratio.

Applications

At the output, the compressor can be used as a limiter to control signal peaks and prevent distortion from occurring in the analog / digital conversion stage.
When taking and mixing, light compression can bring out weak parts of the signal and thus reveal certain details.
In the mix, the compressor allows you to increase the average level of the audio volume output.

Does MP3 affect the sound quality?

The compression of songs affects the quality, but the losses are not necessarily audible.

mp3 audio quality

Is compression of MP3 songs harmful to the sound quality? Whether it is HD music or “normal” definition, the question of compression remains. The advantage is that the weight of the songs is reduced, so they take up less space in the memory of a phone or a portable music player. With standard MP3 compression, a music album ranges from 500 MB to 45 MB.

But by the way, the music is damaged. The sound seems a little less natural, less precise, less dynamic. Some of the audio information is literally destroyed. It doesn’t always sound good, but for some songs the difference is clear until everyone will notice.

mp3 quality

Fortunately, you can improve the quality of an MP3 song by compressing it with less force. The loss of sound quality becomes less clear, but in return the song weighs more. MP3 isn’t the only compressed music format that corrupts music. The most famous competitors are AAC, Ogg Vorbis and WMA. MP3 is not the most efficient compression format, this title applies to the Ogg Vorbis, but it is still a good option. All music players can play MP3 and online record stores prefer this format.

Lossless compression

However, some music lovers are reluctant to MP3. They swear by “nondestructive” compression, which does not remove sound information. The music has been completely preserved: we hear absolutely no difference. The best known non-destructive formats are Flac, APE and Alac. Unfortunately, not all electronic devices can play music recorded in these formats. Few artists offer their music in “non-destructive” compression. And the weight of the parts thus compressed is still very heavy. An album quickly reaches several hundred megabytes. However, the Flac stands out as the reference format for the most demanding music lovers.

Is it reasonable to keep using MP3? This remains a smart choice for most music lovers, as long as they choose an appropriate compression ratio. Which one to choose: 192 kbit / s, 256 kbit / s or 320 kbit / s? The stronger the compression, the lighter the number, but the lower the quality. With 128 kbit / s, the sound has clearly deteriorated, most of us can hear it. At 192 kbit / s, degradation becomes difficult for most of us to observe except for some rare numbers.

With 256 kbit / s, you have to have a musical ear and good sound equipment to make the difference. With 320 kbit / s, you need a well-trained ear and highly accurate audio equipment to make a difference. We only see a difference in quality in certain titles and only in certain passages. Therefore, most of us can settle for 192 kbit / s recording. Music lovers should expect a minimum of 256 kbit / s. And professionals will choose formats of 320 kbit / s or ‘lossless’.

Data compression techniques

It is evident that coding techniques for multimedia information contain large amounts of data that require memory space for recording and high transmission speed for transfer to other digital systems.

These needs can be met by reducing the space occupied by the data with special compression techniques. Compressed data cannot be used directly for processing, viewing, or playback. Compression techniques are used by special programs immediately before data storage or transmission. During the read or receive phase, similar programs perform decompression. Compression can be done on the basis that information encoding techniques dedicate an always equal amount of memory to each information element (be it a character, a pixel or a sound sample), regardless of their statistical frequency and its significance.

The compression techniques developed so far are more than a hundred but grouped into two categories:

Compression without loss of information.

Lossless compression techniques are based on compact coding of the same data streams or coding with a small number of bits of the most statistically frequent data.

Picture
This compression is completely reversible and the decompression program returns the exact bit sequence as it originally was. For this reason, loss-free technique is applicable to any type of data, including executable texts and programs, although the achievable compression factor is not very high: values ​​usually range from 2: 1 to 4: 1. Of course, these results vary depending on the type of input data.

RLE encoding

Data Compression

The RLE (Run Length Encoding) compression technique is oriented to equal byte sequences. In the original version, it provides the introduction of a special character that indicates the beginning of a sequence, and instead of encoding the same characters in the sequence one by one, it encodes only the first one, followed by a number indicating where many times drawn and repeated. Specifies with the Sc character at the beginning of the sequence, the statement

these ******** are eight stars… these Sc * 8 are eight stars

where 8 is not encoded as an ASCII character but as a binary number.

The decompression program interprets the next byte as a counter and rebuilds the original sequence.

For image compression, RLE encoding only works well with images that contain large areas of uniform color, but are not very effective with complex images.

Compression with loss of information.

Loss-free compression techniques are not sufficient to solve the problem of the huge amount of data generated by encoding multimedia information, e.g. Video images while allowing better use of memory space on disks or data transmission lines. High resolution. , audio or video.

However, to try to solve this problem, it is necessary to remember that multimedia information, although subject to transformation, can remain understandable; This allows for compression factors that are higher in some orders of magnitude than those observed.

These interventions can be studied based on the behavior (vision and hearing) of our sensory systems to reduce the required memory without obvious changes in information content. Compression techniques that do this are called “lossy” since the least significant piece of information is irreversibly suppressed. Therefore, it appears that the bitstream after decompression is different from the original, and therefore these techniques cannot be used for other types of information, e.g. Text. Furthermore, the information thus compressed is not suitable for further processing as the loss introduced with each subsequent step becomes more and more apparent.

What is video encoding and how does it work?

The technique of compressing videos

What do we mean when we talk about video coding or, as industry experts generally call it, video coding?

YOUTUBE VIDEO FORMAT

Simply put, video encoding is the process of compressing and converting video content. The ultimate goal is to use less storage space, use less bandwidth, and make the user experience smoother. It goes without saying that the compression process causes a significant loss of information. The more data that is applied, the more data is deleted in the video. The result is a different version of the original due to missing data.

mp4 videos

Why is video coding so important?

Video encoding is essential for transmission because it simplifies the transmission of video on the Internet through a compression process. Compression reduces the bandwidth required while providing a high quality experience. Without this, raw video content would not allow many users to view content on the Internet due to insufficient connection speeds. The protagonist of this process is the bit rate or the speed of digital data transmission that can be transmitted in a certain time interval in a communication channel. When streaming, the bit rate determines whether users can easily view the content or are exposed to video buffering.

Another fundamental aspect of video coding is compatibility. Indeed, sometimes the content is already compressed to an appropriate size, but it still needs to be encoded to be compatible with different devices and applications, although this is often referred to as transcoding.

The video encoding process is governed by video codecs, which are compression standards that are created through software or hardware applications. Each codec consists of an encoder for compressing the video and a decoder for restoring an approximation of the video for playback. The name codec is actually derived from the merging of the words “encoder” and “decoder”.

But what is the best codec?

It depends on the type of video. On this occasion we will describe the most commonly used.

To stream high quality video over the Internet, H.264 is arguably the most widely used codec for most multimedia traffic. This codec is considered to be of excellent quality, coding speed and compression efficiency, although it is not as efficient as the later HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) compression standard, also known as H.265. H.264 also supports 4K video streaming, a real advance for a codec created in 2003.

Now that we have an overview of codecs, let’s look at some compression techniques.

Compression techniques

The most common compression technique is scaling the resolution. The higher the resolution of a video, the more information is contained in each picture. One way to reduce the amount of data is to reduce the size of the image and then scan it again. As a result, fewer pixels are generated, which reduces the level of detail of the image, which has a positive effect on the amount of information required. This process allows you to set multiple quality levels for a video that correspond to different resolutions created. A practical example is if you are watching a movie in streaming before playing it, you can actually choose the resolution at which you want to watch it, provided your device
Support him

One video compression technique that may not be widely used is the interframe. This process reduces “redundant” information from one frame to another.

Another technique is the P-frame, short for predictive frame, which means that it can look back at an i-frame or another P-frame and understand whether the same images are present. In this case, this part is excluded for reasons of space.

B-Frame, on the other hand, is the bidirectional predictive frame that offers good compression without affecting the viewing experience. However, this technique requires a higher coding profile.

Another technique is that which makes it possible to intervene in the color. This process, called “chroma subsampling”, tries to maintain the brightness of the image, which affects the quality of the color. Finally, another method of compressing videos is to reduce the number of frames per second.