A basic understanding of Data compression techniques
Data compression is the process of encoding, restructuring, and modifying digital data files in order to reduce their size. This is done while retaining the fundamental properties of the digital data files.
Data compression reduces the size of network bandwidth required to share or transmit them while also reducing the amount of storage needed to store them, a cost-saving measure.
A basic understanding of Data compression techniques
Data compression is the process of encoding, restructuring, and modifying digital data files in order to reduce their size. This is done while retaining the fundamental properties of the digital data files.
Data compression reduces the size of network bandwidth required to share or transmit them while also reducing the amount of storage needed to store them, a cost-saving measure.
Types of Data Compression
Image compression uses repeated colour patterns to reduce the size of the file.
Text compression: uses codes or symbols for patterns and redundancies, which reduces the overall size, though the information remains unchanged.
Audio Compression: The size of files is shrunk by eliminating noise, but overall quality might be reduced.
Video Compression: uses a combination of audio and image compression by removing unwanted images and background noise to reduce the overall file size, which comes at the expense of quality.
Compression Techniques
There are two main approaches to data compression, with each technique suited to particular applications depending on the desired outcome. There are lossy and lossless compression techniques.
Lossy Compression
In lossy compression, the size of the file is reduced by compromising some detail, and some bits deemed unnecessary are permanently removed. While the discarded data is unimportant, the quality of the data is still affected.
Common lossy compression applications include multimedia files such as photos, graphics, audio, and video files. It’s therefore used only when some degree of quality degradation is tolerable.
Some popular formats include
MPEG, MP4, AVC, HEVC for Video
JPEG for Images
MP3, AAC for Audio.
Lossless Compression
Lossless compression retains the original file information and structure, maintaining absolute quality. It’s therefore a non-destructive data compression technique, as the original version can be 100% restored.
It’s therefore used for executable files like software applications, spreadsheets, text documents, and critical system files.
Examples include
PDF for text
RAW,GIF, PNG, BMP for Images
WAV, FLAC for audio
ZIP for general files
Advantages of Data Compression
For data to be useful as actionable information, it has to be stored in a way that ensures quick retrieval, accessibility, and transmission. When data is stored as captured in its raw format, it becomes uneconomical and hard to scale because of the massive amount of resources it would take to store and share.
Data compression helps in optimizing data and identifying repetitive patterns to streamline data interpretation and analysis and thus turn it into purposeful information. It therefore helps with both storage and data management.
Speeds: data compression facilitates faster data transfers and transmission across networks, particularly for entities that operate in online or cloud environments with different geographical locations.
Storage: Compression allows organizations to store large amounts of data economically due to reduced volumes, reducing storage costs.
Performance: Since large volumes of data have been compressed, they can be processed, accessed, and transmitted faster since they occupy a much smaller footprint.
Scalability: Due to reduced volumes, storage and transmission bandwidth capacities can be scaled economically.
Versatility: Compressions is a universally relevant solution as it can be applied to a diverse range of data files, like audio, text, and images, using diverse formats.
Downsides of Data Compression
As with any useful technology, compression certainty has its drawbacks.
Size limitations: in some cases, some compression tools might have size compression limitations, necessitating the need for multiple compression instances of the same file, which drastically reduces the quality of each compressed file.
Quality: related to the above, compression often degrades the quality of the original file, particularly when several compression instances are run on the same file or when lossy techniques are used. Critical files should either be left in their original format or compressed using lossless techniques, which in some cases might not be possible.
Computational demands: some compression activities tend to require higher than average processing power, which can adversely affect a CPU, particularly when other resource-intensive processes are running concurrently, leading to a drastically slowed-down system.
Reduction limitations: the data compression ratio is finite, which means that even large files can only be compressed up to a certain point, beyond which it’s impossible or will result in unusable data.
Security: in some cases, anti-virus programs might be unable to access compressed files, which introduces a vulnerability in case the compressed file shared or downloaded is infected.
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