30% improvement per codec gen
Each new generation of video codec delivers roughly 30% better compression at the same quality level, at the cost of significantly more encoding compute.
Snapshot · Lex Fridman Podcast
#496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the Internet
Explore episode
May 6, 2026
Where this was said
How video playback works
At 22:41 · chapter starts 15:12
Step-by-step breakdown of decoding: demuxing, entropy coding, intra-prediction, DCT, GPU vs. software paths, and why 45% of files need software fallback. [1] — Kieran Kunhya "Everything we've just said in the past couple of minutes, every sentence is someone's lifetime's work. There are books about every sentence." 24:03
How Video Compression Actually Works
Video compression isn't just removing data — it's degrading reality in ways humans don't notice. Codecs exploit the fact that your eyes care more about brightness than color, and that the next frame is usually almost identical to the last. The target is 1000x compression, achieved through mathematical transforms, spatial prediction, and temporal redundancy removal.
100x–1000x video compression
Video codecs compress raw video data by 100x to 1000x compared to uncompressed formats, far exceeding audio compression ratios.
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