Digital Bitstream
Bitstream vs. Bytestream
A bitstream or bit stream is a time series of bits. A bytestream is a series of bytes, typically of 8 bits each, and can be regarded as a special case of a bitstream.
Bitstreams are used extensively in telecommunications and computing: for example, the SDH communications technology transports synchronous bitstreams, and the TCP communications protocol transports a byte stream without synchronous timing.
Examples
The term bitstream is frequently used to describe the configuration data to be loaded into a field programmable gate array (FPGA). This usage may have originated based on the common method of configuring the FPGA from a serial bit stream, typically from a serial PROM or flash memory chip, although most FPGAs also support a byte-parallel loading method as well. The detailed format of the bitstream for a particular FPGA chip is usually considered proprietary to the FPGA vendor.
When a bitstream is captured and stored in a computer storage medium, a computer file is created.
Bitstream Format
A bitstream format is the format of the data found in some stream of bits used in a digital communication or data storage application. The term typically refers to the format of the output of an encoder or the format of the input to a decoder when using data compression.
Standardized interoperability specifications such as the video coding standards produced by MPEG and the ITU-T and the audio coding standards produced by MPEG often specify only the bitstream format and the decoding process, while allowing individual encoder implementations to be designed using any methods whatsoever that produce bitstreams that conform to the specified bitstream format.
Decoding of a bitstream can be initiated without having to start from the beginning of a 'file' or the beginning of the data transmission. Bitstreams are designed for this to occur.A bitstream format is the format of the data found in some stream of bits used in a digital communication or data storage application. The term typically refers to the format of the output of an encoder or the format of the input to a decoder when using data compression.