Short for
intraframe, a
video compression method used by the
MPEG standard. In a motion sequence, individual frames of pictures are grouped together (called a
group of pictures, or
GOP) and played back so that the viewer registers the video’s spatial motion. Also called a
keyframe, an I-frame is a single frame of digital content that the compressor examines independent of the frames that precede and follow it and stores all of the data needed to display that frame. Typically, a I-frames are interspersed with
P-frames and
B-frames in a compressed video. The more I-frames that are contained, the better quality the video will be; however, I-frames contain the most amount of
bits and therefore take up more space on the storage medium.
Also see P-frame and B-frame.
