Compression for Great Digital Video: Power Tips, Techniques, and...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 447 pages
• Published by: CMP Books; Pap/Cdr edition August 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 157820111X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1578201112
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 2.2 pounds

Product Description
Compression for Great Digital Video is an essential reference for encoding digital video and audio for the Web, CDROM, DVD, and other media. Digital video professionals achieve better and faster results by learning everything that happens before compression (shooting, editing, and capturing) and after compression (getting files on the server, getting reliable bandwidth, and end-user configuration). This book provides a solid foundation in the basics of light, vision, and compression technology applicable to any compression software. It also teaches how to use the most popular applications to optimize files for maximum quality, efficiency, and manageability.

Compression for Great Digital Videoshows readers how to achieve better results quicker when encoding digital video and audio for the Web, CD-ROM, DVD, and other media.

Book Info
Novices and professionals alike will benefit from this highly readable guide that has been carefully crafted to present the need to know elements of video and audio compression without ever requiring more than basic algebra. Softcover. CD-ROM included.

Reader Reviews
This book is not meant for beginners. The reviewer who gave the book one star is simply clueless, who obviously chose to ignore the preface, which clearly says that "this book is for compressionists ..." (i.e., not for total beginners, who should see Digital Video for Dummies). The author of this book manages to do exactly what he promises, which is to detail the use of a vast number of tools, to generate digital video in countless formats, on innumerable types of media. The possible permutations when all tools, formats, and media are taken together is simply mind-numbing, which is why such a book is necessary in the first place. Any dedicated amateur (or even professional) compressionist needs to know whether there is a better way to do what he or she stumbled across by accident on the vast Internet. This book very clearly describes many of the best combination of tools and strategies to produce the best content possible. The writing style is very fluid and friendly, although I would stop short of calling the book an easy read, because the amount of information is too overwhelming for a straight read; instead, I would use it almost like a reference and jump to a particular chapter to refresh my memory and skills just before undertaking a new compression task. With so much information to write about, I am sure the book was an organizational nightmare for the author, and although he did an overall great job in organizing it, there are still numerous spots where he could have done a better job of introducing a topic before using it to explain other topics. Examples that come to mind: referring to DirectShow without describing it, or creating examples based on video editing tools like Cleaner without first introducing the tool (there are others). All in all, this is a book that I will continue to use often. Comment | | (Report this)