Video Compression Why is it Necessary?

Video compression, is an aspect of the digital age that is massively taken for granted,
most would associate the term in correlation with file sizes. It is true that it is mostly
associated with it but there are further uses to compression than would be expected.
There are two types of compression they are lossless and lossy compression. Lossless
is a reversible type of compression, they can be compressed and uncompressed
without any loss of data. The only drawback to this is even in its compressed format,
it still retains a very large file size.
For example in Understanding Digital Cinema a Proffessional Handbook it states that
Amoviewithanaspectratioof1.85:1is39962160pixels,foratotalof8,631,360pixels
perframe.EachpixelisrepresentedintheDigitalCinemaDistributionMaster(DCDM)by
three12bitvalues;thisworksoutto310,728,960bits,ornearly40megabytes,perframe.A
2hourmovieis172,800frames(at24fps)foratotalofnearly7terabytes.Thisisa
phenomenalamountofdata;thelargestcommonlyavailableportablemediumisthe2layer
DVDthatcanstore9.4gigabytes,sothe2hourmoviewouldneedover700DVDsinits
uncompressedform.Transmissionofasinglemovieoverasatellitetransponder,evenifwe
assumeatotallyerrorfreecircuit,wouldtakemorethan2weeks.

This is a staggering amount of data, now thinking in terms of uploading your own
lossless video codecs such as DNxHD codec developed by Avid, it would take a
staggering amount of time, for your audiences to load a video, not to mention there
are only a minimal amount of devices that support this format or could even play it.
This is why lossless videos compressed and exported into a different format for wider
playback availability.
Lossy compression tend to discardordistortsomeoftheinformationintheoriginalimage

dataTheintentofsuchsystemsistoprovidethemaximumamountofcompressionofthe
imagedataconsistentwithanacceptablylowlevelofdistortionoftheimagesAgood
exampleofalossycompressionistheH.264codecwhichtendstovaluespeedoverqualityof
data.ThisiscodecismostlyusedforonlinevideosinsitessuchasYouTubebecauseit
slightlycompromisesinvideoqualityforfasterandlowerbandwidthstreaming.Itisalsoa
widelysupportedcodec,withalargequantityofdevicescapableofplayback,thusallowinga
widerrangeofuserstoviewthevideo.
LossycompressiontakesadvantageoftheHumanVisualSystem(HSV),whicharetheeyes,
opticnerves,andpartsofthebrainthatinterpretwhatwesee.HVSdoesnotcompletely
capableofprocessingalltheinformationwesee,andthatswhatlossycompressionusestoits
advantage,itremovestheinformationthatcouldnotbeseenbyHSV.Agoodexampleof
thisisearlystopmotionsthathaslowerframerates,technicallyearlystopmotionsareaform
oflossycompression,theyarechoppycomparedtohigherframeratessuchas24fps,butare
HSVcomprehendwhateverisbeingandshownandstichesittogethertoforma
comprehensiblemotion.

Reference:
Swartz,Charles,2004.UnderstandingDigitalCinema:AProfessionalHandbook.1sted.USA:Focal
Press.