v1.1.3 / TOC (3 chapters) / 01 mar 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* The spread of computing has led to an explosion in the volume of data to be stored on hard disks and sent over the Internet. This growth has led to a need for "data compression", that is, the ability to reduce the amount of storage or Internet bandwidth required to handle data. This document provides a survey of data compression techniques. The focus is on the most prominent data compression schemes, particularly popular archivers, JPEG image compression, and MPEG video and audio compression.