Video compression

Abstract

This section provides an introduction as to why video compression is necessary (namely, due to technological transmission and storage constraints). After a brief historical overview which sets the context that video compression has been with us since the first television broadcasts, it describes the fundamental compression stages used in contemporary codecs (i.e., entropy coding, domain transforms, and temporal coherence). This chapter also describes how several of these algorithms were chosen due to various limitations and quirks of the human psychovisual system. This section concludes with a deeper look at the details of common video compression algorithms in use today, including AVC and HEVC.