Image pre-processing for optimal compression results

There is a great deal of interest today in applying digital compression schemes to images so that they may be stored and/or transmitted more efficiently. In order to ensure that the source material survives the (typically lossy) compression, storage and/or transmission, and decompression with minimal degradation, care must be exercised in capturing, filtering, and converting the image to the format suitable for compression. The author discusses how the video is described in the analog formats predominant today, the formats that digital video compression schemes require as input, and the possible pitfalls of conversion from one format to the other