Understanding Compression: Data Compression for Modern Developers 1st Edition

by Colt McAnlis (Author), Aleks Haecky (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1491961537

ISBN-10: 1491961538

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If you want to attract and retain users in the booming mobile services market, you need a quick-loading app that won’t churn through their data plans. The key is to compress multimedia and other data into smaller files, but finding the right method is tricky. This witty book helps you understand how data compression algorithms work—in theory and practice—so you can choose the best solution among all the available compression tools.

With tables, diagrams, games, and as little math as possible, authors Colt McAnlis and Aleks Haecky neatly explain the fundamentals. Learn how compressed files are better, cheaper, and faster to distribute and consume, and how they’ll give you a competitive edge.

Learn why compression has become crucial as data production continues to skyrocket
Know your data, circumstances, and algorithm options when choosing compression tools
Explore variable-length codes, statistical compression, arithmetic numerical coding, dictionary encodings, and context modeling
Examine tradeoffs between file size and quality when choosing image compressors
Learn ways to compress client- and server-generated data objects
Meet the inventors and visionaries who created data compression algorithms

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Colt McAnlis is a Developer Advocate at Google focusing on Games, compression, and Performance; Before that, he was a graphics programmer in the games industry working at Blizzard, Microsoft (Ensemble), and Petroglyph. He’s been an Adjunct Professor at SMU Guildhall, a UDACITY instructor (twice), and a Book Author. Recently, he’s been teaching Android Devs the Zen of Performance. When he's not working with developers, Colt spends his time preparing for an invasion of giant ants from outer space. He’s also got a whole plethora of publications,videos and other things accounting for over 600,000 views.

Aleks Haecky is a Developer Advocate, Training Developer, and Writer at Google with a passion for bridging the language gap between experts and their audience. He has worked behind the scenes of Performance, Udacity, the Google Developer Channel, and documentation. In a previous life he translated herpetological books and taught kayaking. Needless to say, he's also working on the next Great American Novel and lurks on LinkedIn.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (August 16, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 242 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1491961538
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1491961537
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.55 x 9.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,130,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #231 in Information Theory
- #665 in Data Modeling & Design (Books)
- #10,541 in Computer Science (Books)

Customer Reviews:
20 ratings

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4 star		7%
3 star		12%
2 star		3%
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AmaAddict

Good coverage, but way too many typos

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2016

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It's a good high-level overview of various compression algorithms. They make a big deal in the beginning about how this book doesn't have any math in it, but I think that the conversation would have been richer had they included some. My biggest problem with the book is the huge number of typos. As somebody who is reading this as a refresher, it's fine, but I can't imagine how lost I would be if i was trying to learn this stuff for the first time and every page has some algorithm-breaking typo on it.

6 people found this helpful

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R B

Good, but hardly covers lossy compression

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed the book. But I really wanted to learn more about lossy compression methods. The chapter on them is less than a page and ends with: "That's another book." But where is it?

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Customer

Best book out there

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020

Verified Purchase

If you do not know anything about compression - this is the best book out there. It has great illustrations and throughs that make it so much easier to understand the concepts like VLC and dictionary transforms. Amazing read.

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Joel

This book is pretty fun and I learned a lot about a rather ...

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

I don't do anything with compression in my line of work, but I got this book on the recommendation of a colleague. This book is pretty fun and I learned a lot about a rather niche topic. I mostly only read programming books and this book was a nice light hearted read. Compared to some other programming books this was a breath of fresh air, it was the programming equivalent of a fun fiction novel (if that makes any sense).

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Leandro Moreira

You should be reading this book now

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2016

Verified Purchase

I recommend this book for ANYONE which write code. It's well written, easy to read but complete.

The book brings you to a soft and gentle introduction and practice of multiples methods of compression. I wish we have more book similar to this one.

I always wanted to know more about how video compression works and then I start a Coursera course, Fundamentals of Digital Image and Video Processing, and this BOOK widely appeared. It's being A HUGE help to me.

Thank you very much for the many years you (authors) were studying these subjects and then "translate" them to us through this book :)

2 people found this helpful

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David S. Green

Authors have a great sense of humor and make the material enjoyable and ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2017

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Delightful read. Authors have a great sense of humor and make the material enjoyable and deep enough without going down rabbit holes.

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R2D2

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2017

It was great read

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2016

Starting with the phrase "maths are hard" was not a good sign for this book. To be honest, I even felt a condescending tone in they way the author tried to explain different compression algorithms, he spent too much time trying to shield and insulate the reader from "hard mathematics" and jump from example to example without any conclusion.

I got lost so many times reading this book, not worth it. For a much better introduction to compression algorithms I will recommend "Compression Algorithms for Real Programmers" by Peter Wayne.

9 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Gilon Benoit

Very good reference document upon Data compression techniques and their evolution thru the years

Reviewed in France on June 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

I bought this book because I would like to learn about modern compression techniques as everything I applied up to now was some kind of RLE which did not fit the requirements of a new project I have in mind.
Now I am ready to apply this knowledge in a retro computing environement.
The content points to every major algorithm and thoroughly explains the context of its creation, how it works, and how it compares to others.
This book and the companion Youtube channel ("Compression Head") will guide you so that you have the possibility to master at least the basic aspects of data compression.

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Understanding Compression: Data Compression for Modern Developers 1st Edition

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