Comment by olddustytrail

Yes, the problem really stems from the fact that git "understands" text files but not really anything other than that, so it can't really make a good diff between say a jpeg and its updated version, so it simply relies on compression for those other formats.

It would be nice to have a VCS that could manage these more effectively but most binary formats don't lend themselves to that, even when it might be an additional layer to an image.

I reckon there's still room for better image and video formats that would work better with VCS.