Understanding Video Compression: Codecs and Transcoding

Posted on December 16, 2010 in Editing | No Comments

What happens to the image once it’s captured by an image sensor? Well it’s compressed of course – the data is twisted and hammered and forced down to size in what is really the greatest bit technical wizardry in all of filmmaking. But that mathematical miracle known as compression isn’t always cooperative.

…Video compression is clearly our friend because without a lot of compression we would have a very hard time handling the massive data we get from a 1080p video stream. Think of two mega pixels per frame at 24, 30 or 60 frames per second (translates to 48, 60 or even 120 mega pixels data per second). On the flip side, video compression reduces the possible image quality we can get. It is good to better understand how we deal with the implications of compressed data. It is kind of like the difference between Raw and JPEG images for still cameras, though with video the compression is a lot stronger. That said, it’s important to consider that when we watch a movie, the moving image is rarely analyzed as critically as still images

— DP Review| Read The Full Article