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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteRun-length encoding (RLE) is a lossless method that represents consecutive repetitions of the same value by recording the value and how many times it repeats. A sequence such as AAAAA can be represented conceptually as (A, 5); decoding repeats A five times to recover the original sequence.
How run-length encoding works
An encoder scans an ordered sequence and groups each maximal adjacent stretch of identical values into a run. For example, AAAABBCCCCC has three runs: (A, 4), (B, 2), and (C, 5). An RLE decoder uses each value and its count to reconstruct the sequence.
Some formats also need to represent values that do not repeat. They store these as literal segments, rather than as replicate runs. Microsoft describes its NSCodec stream as segments of runs and literals in its NSCodec Run-Length Encoding protocol documentation; DICOM likewise specifies separate replicate-run and literal-run encodings.
The pair notation is conceptual, not a universal byte format. A notation such as 4A2B5C is ambiguous if the input can contain digits unless the format defines escaping and boundaries. Actual encodings specify how counts, literal data, run limits, and special cases are represented.
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When RLE saves space—and when it does not
RLE is most useful when identical values appear in long adjacent stretches, such as broad areas of repeated image data. It does not combine matching values separated by other values unless the data is transformed or another technique is used.
When values alternate or runs are short, the count and control information can outweigh the savings and make the encoded result larger. Microsoft’s NSCodec examples include a case where encoding expands the data and the original stream is sent instead. NVIDIA notes that its value-and-run representation can double the size when every run has length one; that figure applies to that representation, not to every RLE format.
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RLE is a family of formats, not one byte format
Implementations differ in what they treat as a value—such as a byte, pixel, or another symbol—and in their count codes, literal handling, boundaries, and expansion behavior. These examples illustrate why the name RLE alone does not establish that two files or systems are compatible.
DICOM RLE
The DICOM PS3.5 2019a specification defines byte-oriented replicate and literal runs. A replicate run encodes 2–128 bytes, while a literal run encodes 1–128 bytes. Each image row is encoded separately, runs must not cross row boundaries, and segments are padded to an even number of bytes when necessary. See the DICOM PS3.5 section G.3.
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Windows bitmap RLE
Windows documents BI_RLE8 for 8-bit bitmaps and BI_RLE4 for 4-bit bitmaps. Its encoded and absolute modes use escape pairs for events including end of line, end of bitmap, and delta movement. Those rules are specific to the Windows bitmap formats; they are not a general RLE convention. See Microsoft’s bitmap compression documentation.
Microsoft NSCodec
NSCodec applies runs and literals to an image stream. Its documentation describes an encoder that can send the original stream when the encoded form is larger, rather than treating RLE as guaranteed compression. See Microsoft’s NSCodec protocol documentation.
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R’s rle() function
R’s base rle() function returns run lengths and corresponding values; inverse.rle() reconstructs the input. In this software function, missing values are treated as unequal to the previous value even when both are missing. This is behavior of R’s function, not a rule for every RLE file format. See the R documentation for run-length encoding.
What to check before using an RLE format
For interoperability or implementation work, identify the specific container, protocol, or software function rather than relying on the label “RLE.” Check:
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- What counts as a symbol: a bit, byte, pixel, or other value.
- How replicate runs and literal segments are encoded.
- The permitted run lengths and how longer sequences are split.
- Whether runs may cross rows, segments, or other boundaries, and how padding is handled.
- How escape values and special control events are represented.
- Whether the encoder can leave data uncompressed when RLE would increase its size.
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