In order to make digital video's use widespread, there had to be a way to reduce the amounts of data that needed to be stored and transmitted. This reduction in the amount of storage is a direct result of the advances made possible by video compression. To understand Digital Video Architecture, you need to start at the beginning. The beginning in this case is known as Video Compression. That is the start of this article; after that, we will get into the most common formats in use today.