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Miloslav Ciz 2024-10-13 16:12:09 +02:00
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@ -12,4 +12,6 @@ The advantage of digital technology is its **resilience to [noise](noise.md)** w
But this is not to say digital data can't become distorted too -- it can. It is just less likely and it's easier to deal with this. It for example happens that space particles (and similar physics phenomena, e.g. electronic interference) flip bits in computer memory, i.e. there is always a probability of some [bit](bit.md) flipping from 0 to 1 or vice versa. We call this **data [corruption](corruption.md)**. This may also happen due to physical damage to digital media (e.g. scratches on the surface of CDs), imperfections in computer network transmissions (e.g. packet loss over [wifi](wifi.md)) etc. However we can introduce further measures to prevent, detect and correct data corruption, e.g. by keeping [redundant](redundancy.md) copies (2 copies of data allow detecting corruption, 3 copies allow even its correction), keeping [checksums](checksum.md) or [hashes](hash.md) (which allow only detection of corruption but don't take much extra space), employing error correcting codes etc. We have to keep in mind that data corruption is very dangerous because a small local damage may destroy the whole data (owing partially to our wrong assumption that digital data data won't be damaged), while local damage to analog data will typically only destroys that one small affected part, keeping the rest intact. So let's be aware of this.
Another way in which digital data can degrade similarly to analog data is **reencoding between lossy-[compressed](compression.md) formats** (in the spirit of the famous "needs more [jpeg](jpg.md)" [meme](meme.md)). A typical example is digital movies: as new standard for video encoding are emerging, old movies are being reconverted from old formats to the new ones, however as video is quite heavily lossy-compressed, losses and distortion of information happens between the reencodings. This is best seen in videos and images circulating on the internet that are constantly being ripped and converted between different formats. This way it may happen that digital movies recorded nowadays may only survive into the future in very low quality, just like old analog movies survived until today in degraded quality. This can be prevented by storing the original data only with lossless compression and with each new emerging format create the release of the data from the original.
Another way in which digital data can degrade similarly to analog data is **reencoding between lossy-[compressed](compression.md) formats** (in the spirit of the famous "needs more [jpeg](jpg.md)" [meme](meme.md)). A typical example is digital movies: as new standard for video encoding are emerging, old movies are being reconverted from old formats to the new ones, however as video is quite heavily lossy-compressed, losses and distortion of information happens between the reencodings. This is best seen in videos and images circulating on the internet that are constantly being ripped and converted between different formats. This way it may happen that digital movies recorded nowadays may only survive into the future in very low quality, just like old analog movies survived until today in degraded quality. This can be prevented by storing the original data only with lossless compression and with each new emerging format create the release of the data from the original.
Digital vs analog is also discussed **from artistic points of view**, especially in video and audio recording, i.e. movies and [music](music.md). Digital and analog media differ qualitatively -- a movie shot on film (analog medium) looks different than one shot on digital camera, film captures light a bit differently, it has a different kind of [noise](noise.md) etc. It is possible to try to simulate the "analog look" with [postprocessing](postprocessing.md) filters but the results are always far from perfect; we have to realize that it is IMPOSSIBLE to make an analog version from digital recording because when we are capturing [real life](irl.md), we only capture a tiny bit of of [information](information.md) and lose the rest -- analog and digital recorders will capture different (even if mostly overlapping) parts of the real world and once we have the data, we can't retrieve that what has been thrown away. It's similar to wanting to extract an infrared photography from visible light photography -- they look similar but one can't be made from the other. So the decision has to really be made before recording. Now it is generally agreed that analog is aesthetically superior: it is kind of "softer", has nicer colors and the analog noise (unlike digital one) is very pleasant; digital recordings are clearer, sharper but basically sterile and soulless. The reason for using digital for all mainstream movies and songs nowadays is purely economical, it is just too much cheaper, quicker, faster and much more convenient to use digital (but the result looks like [shit](shit.md)).