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Video Compression Pipeline

See how H.264 turns raw pixels into a compressed bitstream, frame by frame

8x8 pixel block (macroblock sample)
Raw data calculation
1920 x 1080 x 3 bytes = 6.2 MB / frame
x 30 fps = 186 MB/s
x 60 sec = 11.2 GB / minute
Step 1 / 10Raw Video Data

Uncompressed video is enormous. A single frame of 1080p video contains about 6.2 million bytes (1920 x 1080 pixels x 3 color channels). At 30 frames per second, that is roughly 186 MB/s or 1.49 Gbps. Without compression, one minute of raw video would take over 11 GB of storage.

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