Compression artifact

A compression artifact (or artefact) is a noticeable distortion of media (including images, audio, and video) caused by the application of lossy data compression. Lossy data compression involves discarding some of the media's data so that it becomes simplified enough to be stored within the desired disk space or be transmitted (or streamed) within the bandwidth limitations (known as a data rate or bit rate for media that is streamed). If the compressor could not reproduce enough data in the compressed version to reproduce the original, the result is a diminishing of quality, or introduction of artifacts. Alternatively, the compression algorithm may not be intelligent enough to discriminate between distortions of little subjective importance and those objectionable to the viewer.

Compression artifact

A compression artifact (or artefact) is a noticeable distortion of media (including images, audio, and video) caused by the application of lossy data compression. Lossy data compression involves discarding some of the media's data so that it becomes simplified enough to be stored within the desired disk space or be transmitted (or streamed) within the bandwidth limitations (known as a data rate or bit rate for media that is streamed). If the compressor could not reproduce enough data in the compressed version to reproduce the original, the result is a diminishing of quality, or introduction of artifacts. Alternatively, the compression algorithm may not be intelligent enough to discriminate between distortions of little subjective importance and those objectionable to the viewer.