frame at a time. Some algorithms stop at this point. For example, M-JPEG (motion JPEG) simply compresses individual frames (using the JPEG compression algorithm), which can then be played back like a cartoon flip-book. But compressing 30 frames per second is...

• -MPEG-1
• -MPEG-2
• -Now For The Good News

about sound schemes, SPDIF, and HDMI. Dolby TrueHD uses a lossless compression algorithm to compact the data it encodes. In the simplest of terms, this means all transforms applied during compression are completely reversible, so that the uncompressed audio...

• -Dolby Digital and DTS

Format One thing is certain: With its low data rate combined with comparatively high video quality, MPEG-4 revolutionizes the market for digital video. MPEG-4 offers better compression algorithms than MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. However, encoding of a MPEG-4 sequence...

3.1. AVI, the proprietary format of Microsoft's "Video for Windows" application, merely provides a framework for various compression algorithms such as Cinepak, Intel Indeo, Microsoft Video 1, Clear Video or IVI. In its first version, AVI supported a maximum...

Cable), DVB-S (satellite) and DVB-H (Handheld). Alike ATSC, DVB uses MPEG2 compression for video data and supports Dolby digital AC-3 5.1 surround sound. The next step for DVB-S is DVB-S2, supporting better compression algorithms for HDTV, like MPEG4 or WMV9...

Among the best-known are DivX, xVid and MP3. Unlike MPEG-2 (DVD), DivX-coded files are considerably smaller and thus take up less room. Thanks to constantly improving video code compression algorithms, DivX and the others are more than a match for their DVD...