What is difference between Encoding and Compression ?

[smital desai]

Hello Group ,

           Please explain what is difference between " Encoding and  Compression " ?

As in given a choice ...When i would go for encoding and when i will choose compression ?

Thanks,
Smital Desai

[Tanmay Upadhyay]

Encoding is representing a piece of information in other form. Say for example, one can represent 10 as 0xA. This is hexadecimal encoding.

Compression is done solely to lessen the number of symbols to represent given piece of information. It is achieved with the help of specific encoding of information.

Encoding is used at various places but audio/video encoding is more known encoding to us. This leads to this confusion. As different types of encoding gives different types of compression, it combines encoding & compression. But encoding doesn't always compress the data. Those examples are in communication theory. NRZ & NRZI are example of encoding which doesn't compress data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-return-to-zero

Hope this helps.

-- Tanmay

[smital desai]

yeh , Thanks Tanmay :)  ..that was exactly my confusion .