Representing data

All data inside a computer is transmitted as a series of electrical signals that are either on or off.
Therefore, in order for a computer to be able to process any kind of data, including text, images
and sound, they must be converted into binary form. If the data is not converted into binary – a
series of 1s and 0s – the computer will simply not understand it or be able to process it.

Representing text
When any key on a keyboard is pressed, it needs to be converted into a binary number so that it
can be processed by the computer and the typed character can appear on the screen.

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A code where each number represents a character can be used to convert text into binary. One
code we can use for this is called ASCII. The ASCII code takes each character on the keyboard
and assigns it a binary number. For example:

 the letter ‘a’ has the binary number 0110 0001 (this is the denary number 97)
 the letter ‘b’ has the binary number 0110 0010 (this is the denary number 98)
 the letter ‘c’ has the binary number 0110 0011 (this is the denary number 99)

Text characters start at denary number 0 in the ASCII code, but this covers special characters
including punctuation, the return key and control characters as well as the number keys, capital
letters and lower case letters.

ASCII code can only store 128 characters, which is enough for most words in English but not
enough for other languages. If you want to use accents in European languages or larger alphabets
such as Cyrillic (the Russian alphabet) and Chinese Mandarin then more characters are needed.
Therefore another code, called Unicode, was created. This meant that computers could be used
by people using different languages.

Representing images
Images also need to be converted into binary in order for a computer to process them so that they
can be seen on our screen. Digital images are made up of pixels. Each pixel in an image is made
up of binary numbers.

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If we say that 1 is black (or on) and 0 is white (or off), then a simple black and white picture can
be created using binary.

To create the picture, a grid can be set out and the squares coloured (1 – black and 0 – white).
But before the grid can be created, the size of the grid needs be known. This data is called
metadata and computers need metadata to know the size of an image. If the metadata for the
image to be created is 10x10, this means the picture will be 10 pixels across and 10 pixels down.

This example shows an image created in this way:

Adding colour
The system described so far is fine for black and white images, but most images need to use
colours as well. Instead of using just 0 and 1, using four possible numbers will allow an image to
use four colours. In binary this can be represented using two bits per pixel:

 00 – white
 01 – blue
 10 – green
 11 – red

While this is still not a very large range of colours, adding another binary digit will double the
number of colours that are available:

 1 bit per pixel (0 or 1): two possible colours

 2 bits per pixel (00 to 11): four possible colours
 3 bits per pixel (000 to 111): eight possible colours
 4 bits per pixel (0000 – 1111): 16 possible colours
 …

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  16 bits per pixel (0000 0000 0000 0000 – 1111 1111 1111 1111): over 65 0000 possible
colours

The number of bits used to store each pixel is called the colour depth. Images with more colours
need more pixels to store each available colour. This means that images that use lots of colours
are stored in larger files.

Image quality
Image quality is affected by the resolution of the image. The resolution of an image is a way of
describing how tightly packed the pixels are.

In a low-resolution image, the pixels are larger so fewer are needed to fill the space. This results
in images that look blocky or pixelated. An image with a high resolution has more pixels, so it
looks a lot better when you zoom in or stretch it. The downside of having more pixels is that the
file size will be bigger.

Representing sound
Sound needs to be converted into binary for computers to be able to process it. To do this, sound
is captured - usually by a microphone - and then converted into a digital signal.

An analogue to digital converter will sample a sound wave at regular time intervals. For
example, a sound wave like this can be sampled at each time sample point:

The samples can then be converted to binary. They will be recorded to the nearest whole number.

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Time sample 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Denary 8 3 7 6 9 7 2 6 6 6
Binary 1000 0011 0111 0110 1001 0111 0010 0100 0110 0110

If the time samples are then plotted back onto the same graph, it can be seen that the sound wave
now looks different. This is because sampling does not take into account what the sound wave is
doing in between each time sample.

This means that the sound loses quality as data has been lost between the time samples. The way
to increase the quality and store the sound at a quality closer to the original, is to have more time
samples that are closer together. This way, more detail about the sound can be collected, so when
it’s converted to digital and back to analogue again it does not lose as much quality.

The frequency at which samples are taken is called the sample rate, and is measured in Hertz
(Hz). 1 Hz is one sample per second. Most CD-quality audio is sampled at 44 100 or 48 000
KHz.

Sample rate

How many samples of data are taken per second. This is normally measured in hertz, eg an audio
file usually uses samples of 44.1 kHz (44,100 audio samples per second).

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Video compression
Video compression technologies are about reducing and removing redundant video data so
that a digital video file can be effectively sent over a network and stored on computer disks.
With efficient compression techniques, a significant reduction in file size can be achieved
with little or no adverse effect on the visual quality. The video quality, however, can be
affected if the file size is further lowered by raising the compression level for a given
compression technique.

Video codec
The process of compression involves applying an algorithm to the source video to create a
compressed file that is ready for transmission or storage. To play the compressed file, an
inverse algorithm is applied to produce a video that shows virtually the same content as the
original source video. The time it takes to compress, send, decompress and display a file is
called latency. The more advanced the compression algorithm, the higher the latency.

Image compression vs. video compression

Different compression standards utilize different methods of reducing data, and hence,
results differ in bit rate, quality and latency. Compression algorithms fall into two types:
image compression and video compression.
Image compression uses intraframe coding technology. Data is reduced within an image
frame simply by removing unnecessary information that may not be noticeable to the
human eye. Motion JPEG is an example of such a compression standard. Images in a Motion
JPEG sequence is coded or compressed as individual JPEG images.

With the Motion JPEG format, the three images in the above sequence are coded and sent
as separate unique images (I-frames) with no dependencies on each other.

Video compression algorithms such as MPEG-4 and H.264 use interframe prediction to
reduce video data between a series of frames. This involves techniques such as difference
coding, where one frame is compared with a reference frame and only pixels that have
changed with respect to the reference frame are coded. In this way, the number of pixel
values that is coded and sent is reduced. When such an encoded sequence is displayed, the
images appear as in the original video sequence.

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 With difference coding, only the first image (I-frame) is coded in its entirety. In the two
following images (P-frames), references are made to the first picture for the static
elements, i.e. the house. Only the moving parts, i.e. the running man, are coded using
motion vectors, thus reducing the amount of information that is sent and stored.

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Compression
Why compress files?
Processing power and storage space is very valuable on a computer. To get the best out of both,
it can mean that we need to reduce the file size of text, image and audio data in order to transfer
it more quickly and so that it takes up less storage space.

In addition, large files take a lot longer to download or upload which leads to web pages, songs
and videos that take longer to load and play when using the internet.

Compression addresses these issues.

Any kind of data can be compressed. There are two main types of compression: lossy and
lossless.

Lossy compression
Lossy compression removes some of a file’s original data in order to reduce the file size. This
might mean reducing the numbers of colours in an image or reducing the number of samples in a
sound file. This can result in a small loss of quality of an image or sound file.

A popular lossy compression method for images is the JPEG, which is why most images on the
internet are JPEG images. A popular lossy compression method for sounds is MP3. Once a file
has been compressed using lossy compression, the discarded data cannot be retrieved
again.

Lossless compression
Lossless compression doesn’t reduce the quality of the file at all. No data is lost, so lossless
compression allows a file to be recreated exactly as it was when originally created.

There are various algorithms for doing this, usually by looking for patterns in the data that are
repeated. Zip files are an example of lossless compression.

The space savings of lossless compression are not as good as they are with lossy compression.

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