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Media & Compression

Why JPEG degrades and PNG does not — image, video and audio coding from both the information theory and the settings you actually ship.

0chapters 14Foundations 3Paper walkthroughs 0Interactive

Work through a volume in order: textbook → foundations → papers → lab.

② Foundations

Articles that assume nothing and build the ideas of the field, in order.

Coding Theory

Lossless vs lossy, entropy coding, Huffman, arithmetic coding

  1. Entropy Coding from Scratch — From Huffman to Arithmetic Coding ★ MEMBER
  2. Error Correction from Scratch — Sending Data on the Assumption It Will Break FREE
  3. LDPC and Turbo Codes — The Error Correction Behind 5G and Deep Space ★ MEMBER

Image Codecs

JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF — the DCT, quantization, and lossless pipelines

  1. Why JPEG Degrades — The DCT and Quantization from Scratch ★ MEMBER
  2. Why PNG Does Not Degrade — Prediction Filters and Deflate FREE
  3. WebP, AVIF, JPEG XL — The Image Codec Changing of the Guard ★ MEMBER

Video Codecs

MPEG, H.264, AV1 — motion compensation, GOP structure, rate control

  1. Video Compression from Scratch — Motion Compensation and the GOP ★ MEMBER
  2. From H.264 to AV1 — What a Codec Generation Change Really Involves ★ MEMBER
  3. Motion Compensation from Scratch — Where 90% of Video Compression Happens ★ MEMBER

Audio Codecs

MP3, AAC, Opus — perceptual masking as a way of discarding

  1. Audio Compression from Scratch — The Art of Discarding What You Cannot Hear ★ MEMBER
  2. MP3 and Psychoacoustics — The Science of Sounds You Cannot Hear ★ MEMBER

Media in Production

Bitrate ladders, encoder settings, quality metrics — what the job actually asks

  1. Designing a Bitrate Ladder — The First Job You Get in Streaming ★ MEMBER
  2. How to Read Encoder Settings — What CRF, Presets, and 2-Pass Actually Change ★ MEMBER
  3. HLS and DASH — How Video Actually Reaches You FREE

③ Paper walkthroughs

Written from the papers themselves. Every piece links the paper page and its PDF.

  1. Neural Audio Codecs — EnCodec and the Foundation Under Speech LLMs ★ MEMBER arXiv:2210.13438
  2. Neural Compression — The Codec That Learns ★ MEMBER arXiv:1611.01704
  3. Why Opus Won — The Design of a Modern Audio Codec ★ MEMBER RFC 6716