title: Python - How to read a video file as binary data?
body: <p>My assignment asks me to compute a hash from a video file. So I'm guessing what I need to do, is to somehow read the video file as binary data, and then do the hashing shenanigans with that. The problem is, I only know how to read from and write to .txt files - video files are completely new to me. So my questions are:</p>
  
  <p>How do I take a file and read it as binary data?</p>
  
  <p>How do I handle this data? I mean, should I just stick it into a string or should I use an array of some sort? I imagine the amount of numbers is going to be huge and I wouldn't like my computer to crash because I handled the data in some horribly inefficient way :D.</p>
  
  <p>Also, I am not entirely sure what I am talking about when I say "binary data", as I have limited experience with that kind of stuff. I mean, it's not just a string of 1s and 0s right?. So I would also appreciate a crash course on "binary data" :D</p>