1. Compression and HD formats

The data rate, i.e. the quantity of "0s" and "1s" per second, generated in HD production studios by native digital formats, is too high for storage and/or broadcast/distribution media. It is therefore necessary to reduce this native quantity of data, to "compress" it. Mathematical calculations are used to transform native formats into compression formats that reduce the number of 0's and 1's. The coding tools used to generate them from a native format, or to decode them back into the native format, are often called codecs (coder/decoder or, more explicitly, compressor/decompressor). These tools are either covered by international or industry standards, or are proprietary or open source. Some bitrate reduction tools do not deteriorate the quality of the source signal. They are said to be lossless. Unfortunately, they only allow a low compression ratio (between 2 and 4). Other tools cause...