Difference between revisions of "Lossless and lossy"
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
m (→Lossy Codecs: Change wikilink from Codec to Video codec) |
m (DoesItReallyMatter moved page Lossless and Lossy to Lossless and lossy: Casing for common noun) |
(No difference)
| |
Revision as of 10:29, 13 April 2019
Lossless is a way of compressing data which is fully reversible, i.e., does not "throw away" data. A losslessly compressed file can be used to create an exact copy of the source file.
Lossy is the opposite of lossless. A certain amount of data is discarded; how much is usually dependent upon a quality or bit rate setting of the codec. This makes the file (or stream) much smaller that lossless compression, but reduces the quality. It is impossible to transcode from one lossy format to another without further degrading quality.
Lossless Codecs
- WAVE (WAVE is technically a container format, but usually contains lossless PCM audio.)
- FLAC
- WavPack
- HuffYUV video codec
