Rate-distortion theory

Imagine you have a toy that you really like, but it takes up a lot of space in your room. You want to keep the toy, but you also want to be able to move around freely in your room. You have to make a decision: how much space are you willing to give up to keep your toy?

Now let's imagine that instead of a toy, we're talking about a video. Videos take up a lot of space on a computer or phone, and it can be difficult to store and share them. When you compress a video, you are basically deciding how much information you want to keep and how much you are willing to give up.

Rate-distortion theory helps us make this decision. It tells us how much we can compress a video without losing too much quality. In other words, it helps us find the best balance between the size of the video and the quality of the video.

If you try to compress the video too much, you will lose important details that make the video look good. On the other hand, if you don't compress the video enough, it will take up too much space and be difficult to store and share. Rate-distortion theory helps us find the sweet spot where we are not losing too much quality, but the video is still small enough to manage.