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Collaboration, Voice & AV · Foundational

Video Compression

Reducing video data by removing spatial and temporal redundancy and perceptually less important detail.

Definition

Video codecs combine intra-frame compression (like still-image compression using transforms such as DCT) with inter-frame motion compensation. Lossy compression discards detail while lossless or visually lossless methods such as JPEG XS or light compression in AV-over-IP keep quality with lower ratios. Higher compression reduces bandwidth at the cost of latency, processing and artifacts.

Example

A 1080p60 uncompressed signal of about 3 Gbps is compressed to 8 Mbps with H.264 for streaming.

Exam tip

Know the tradeoff triangle of bandwidth, latency and quality when choosing compression.

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