A Media Epigraphy Of Video Compression

This book explores the historical interrelationships between mathematics, medicine and media, and offers a unique perspective on how video compression has shaped our relationship with moving images and the world. It situates compression in a network of technological, visual and epistemic practices spanning from late 18th-century computational methods to the standardization of electrical infrastructure and the development of neurology throughout the 1900s. Bringing into conversation media archaeology, science and technology studies, disability studies and queer theory, each chapter offers an in-depth look at a different trace of compression, such as interlacing, macroblocking or flicker. This is a story of forgotten technologies, unusual media practices, strange images on the margins of visual culture and inventive ways of looking at the world. Readers will find illuminating discussions of the formation of complex scientific and medical systems, and of the violent and pleasurable interactions between our bodies and media infrastructure.

The chapters contained in this handbook address key issues concerning the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of violence in film and media. In addition to providing analyses of representations of violence, they also critically discuss the phenomenology of the spectator, images of atrocity in international cinema, affect and documentary, violent video games, digital infrastructures, cruelty in art cinema, and media and state violence, among many other relevant topics. The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media updates existing studies dealing with media and violence while vastly expanding the scope of the field. Representations of violence in film and media are ubiquitous but remain relatively understudied. Too often they are relegated to questions of morality, taste, or aesthetics while judgments about violence can themselves be subjected to moral judgment. Some may question whether objectionable images are worthy of serious scholarly attention at all. While investigating key examples, the chapters in this handbook consider both popular and academic discourses to understand how representations of violence are interpreted and discussed. They propose new approaches and raise novel questions for how we might critically think about this urgent issue within contemporary culture.

Real-Time Video Compression: Techniques and Algorithms introduces the XYZ video compression technique, which operates in three dimensions, eliminating the overhead of motion estimation. First, video compression standards, MPEG and H.261/H.263, are described. They both use asymmetric compression algorithms, based on motion estimation. Their encoders are much more complex than decoders. The XYZ technique uses a symmetric algorithm, based on the Three-Dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (3D-DCT). 3D-DCT was originally suggested for compression about twenty years ago; however, at that time the computational complexity of the algorithm was too high, it required large buffer memory, and was not as effective as motion estimation. We have resurrected the 3D-DCT-based video compression algorithm by developing several enhancements to the original algorithm. These enhancements make the algorithm feasible for real-time video compression in applications such as video-on-demand, interactive multimedia, and videoconferencing. The demonstrated results, presented in this book, suggest that the XYZ video compression technique is not only a fast algorithm, but also provides superior compression ratios and high quality of the video compared to existing standard techniques, such as MPEG and H.261/H.263. The elegance of the XYZ technique is in its simplicity, which leads to inexpensive VLSI implementation of any XYZ codec. Real-Time Video Compression: Techniques and Algorithms can be used as a text for graduate students and researchers working in the area of real-time video compression. In addition, the book serves as an essential reference for professionals in the field.

Real-Time Video Compression: Techniques and Algorithms introduces the XYZ video compression technique, which operates in three dimensions, eliminating the overhead of motion estimation. First, video compression standards, MPEG and H.261/H.263, are described. They both use asymmetric compression algorithms, based on motion estimation. Their encoders are much more complex than decoders. The XYZ technique uses a symmetric algorithm, based on the Three-Dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (3D-DCT). 3D-DCT was originally suggested for compression about twenty years ago; however, at that time the computational complexity of the algorithm was too high, it required large buffer memory, and was not as effective as motion estimation. We have resurrected the 3D-DCT-based video compression algorithm by developing several enhancements to the original algorithm. These enhancements make the algorithm feasible for real-time video compression in applications such as video-on-demand, interactive multimedia, and videoconferencing. The demonstrated results, presented in this book, suggest that the XYZ video compression technique is not only a fast algorithm, but also provides superior compression ratios and high quality of the video compared to existing standard techniques, such as MPEG and H.261/H.263. The elegance of the XYZ technique is in its simplicity, which leads to inexpensive VLSI implementation of any XYZ codec. Real-Time Video Compression: Techniques and Algorithms can be used as a text for graduate students and researchers working in the area of real-time video compression. In addition, the book serves as an essential reference for professionals in the field.

In The Fold, Laura U. Marks offers a practical philosophy and aesthetic theory for living in an infinitely connected cosmos. Drawing on the theories of Leibniz, Glissant, Deleuze, and theoretical physicist David Bohm—who each conceive of the universe as being folded in on itself in myriad ways—Marks contends that the folds of the cosmos are entirely constituted of living beings. From humans to sandwiches to software to stars, every entity is alive and occupies its own private enclosure inside the cosmos. Through analyses of fiction, documentary, and experimental movies, interactive media, and everyday situations, Marks outlines embodied methods for detecting and augmenting the connections between each living entity and the cosmos. She shows that by affectively mediating with the ever-shifting folded relations within the cosmos, it is possible to build “soul-assemblages” that challenge information capitalism, colonialism, and other power structures and develop new connections with the infinite. With this guide for living within the enfolded and unfolding cosmos, Marks teaches readers to richly apprehend the world and to trace the processes of becoming that are immanent within the fold.

CD-ROM contains compression tools, encoders and video clips.

The book assumes that the reader has a basic background in computing or engineering.