Data Compression - Wikipedia
Hooray for another chance for Wikipedia link surfing! Data compression is the process through which pieces of information are encoded using fewer bits. This can be lossless or lossy. While lossy can encode the same information in less space, it appears that it can lose pieces of information, or is less accurate than lossless.
Data Compression Basics
Here is a quote that I think helps sum it all up. "It lets you store more stuff in the same space, and it lets you transfer that stuff in less time, or with less bandwidth.I used the word "stuff" and not "information" because, for pure data compression algorithms, the compressed file contains exactly the same amount of information as the original one."
This article provides more in depth information on how the encoding process works. The first part covers the basics of lossless data compression, the second covers lossy compression of audio and still images, and the thirds explains video compression.
Unfortunately I could not get the other two articles to load.
I, too, love that Wikipedia offers such straightforward entries about such complex topics! I think there might have been an error with the links that were posted on CourseWeb because I couldn't get them to work either. In case you want to check them out, here they are:
ReplyDeletehttp://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1141/1061
http://tinyurl.com/26eouf6
I hope those links work.
The Historic Pittsburgh site that the first article talks about is awesome! http://digital.library.pitt.edu/pittsburgh/