1. Introduction

Information can be presented in any number of ways. A rich user experience will include examples of many media types, from text to image, from audio to video.

But there is a trade-off. The denser the information contained in a piece of media, the more storage space is needed to contain it. It is up to the operator or creator of an information system to decide where to draw the line when trading off quality for file size.

This section will discuss the various factors that affect media quality and file size, and the ways that people have come up with to handle them