Basics of Video

M ultim edia S ystem s (M odule 1 Lesson 3)

Summ ary: Sources:

H Types of Video H M y research notes
H Conventional A nalog Television
H A nalog vs. D igital Video
D r. Kelin J. Kuhn
H Digital Video h ttp://w ww .ee.wash ington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn
/ntsc/95x4.htm
m Chrom a Sub-sam pling
H Dr. Ze-N ian Li’s course
m HDTV std.
m aterial at:
H Com puter Video h ttp://w ww .cs.sfu.ca/CourseCentral/365/li/

form ats

Types of Video Signals

H Component video -- each primary is sent as a separate
video signal.
m The primaries can either be RGB or a luminance-chrominance
transformation of them (e.g., YIQ, YUV).
m Best color reproduction
m Requires more bandwidth and good synchronization of the
three components
H Composite video -- color (chrominance) and luminance
signals are mixed into a single carrier wave.
m Some interference between the two signals is inevitable.

H S-Video (Separated video, e.g., in S-VHS) -- a compromise

between component analog video and the composite video.
It uses two lines, one for luminance and another for
composite chrominance signal.

Analog Video
Analog video is represented as a continuous (time varying) signal;
Digital video is represented as a sequence of digital images
NTSC Video PAL (SECAM) Video
m 525 scan lines per frame, 30 fps m 625 scan lines per frame, 25
(33.37 msec/frame). frames per second (40
m Interlaced, each frame is divided msec/frame)
into 2 fields, 262.5 lines/field m Interlaced, each frame is divided
m 20 lines reserved for control into 2 fields, 312.5 lines/field
information at the beginning of m Color representation:
each field m Uses YUV color model
m So a maximum of 485 lines of
visible data
• Laserdisc and S-VHS have actual
resolution of ~420 lines
• Ordinary TV -- ~320 lines
• Each line takes 63.5 microseconds
to scan.
m Color representation:
• Uses YIQ color model.
Frame Rate and Interlacing
H Persistence of vision: The human eye retains an image for a
fraction of a second after it views the image. This
property is essential to all visual display technologies.
m The basic idea is quite simple, single still frames are
presented at a high enough rate so that persistence of vision
integrates these still frames into motion.
H Motion pictures originally set the frame rate at 16 frames
per second. This was rapidly found to be unacceptable and
the frame rate was increased to 24 frames per second. In
Europe, this was changed to 25 frames per second, as the
European power line frequency is 50 Hz.
H When NTSC television standards were introduced, the
frame rate was set at 30 Hz (1/2 the 60 Hz line
frequency). Movies filmed at 24 frames per second are
simply converted to 30 frames per second on television
broadcasting.

Frame Rate and Interlacing

H For some reason, the brighter the still image presented to
the viewer, the shorter the persistence of vision. So,
bright pictures require more frequent repetition.
H If the space between pictures is longer than the period of
persistence of vision -- then the image flickers. Large
bright theater projectors avoid this problem by placing
rotating shutters in front of the image in order to increase
the repetition rate by a factor of 2 (to 48) or three (to
72) without changing the actual images.
m Unfortunately, there is no easy way to "put a shutter" in front
of a television broadcast! Therefore, to arrange for two
"flashes" per frame, the flashes are created by interlacing.
H With interlacing, the number of "flashes" per frame is two,
and the field rate is double the frame rate. Thus, NTSC
systems have a field rate of 59.94 Hz and PAL/SECAM
systems a field rate of 50 Hz.

Digital Video
H Advantages over analog:
m Direct random access --> good for nonlinear video editing
m No problem for repeated recording
m No need for blanking and sync pulse
H Almost all digital video uses component video
H The human eye responds more precisely to brightness information
than it does to color, chroma subsampling (decimating) takes
advantage of this.
m In a 4:4:4 scheme, each 8×8 matrix of RGB pixels converts to three
YCrCb 8×8 matrices: one for luminance (Y) and one for each of the two
chrominance bands (Cr and Cb).
m A 4:2:2 scheme also creates one 8×8 luminance matrix but decimates
every two horizontal pixels to create each chrominance-matrix entry. Thus
reducing the amount of data to 2/3rds of a 4:4:4 scheme.
m Ratios of 4:2:0 decimate chrominance both horizontally and vertically,
resulting in four Y, one Cr, and one Cb 8×8 matrix for every four 8×8
pixel-matrix sources. This conversion creates half the data required in a
4:4:4 chroma ratio.
Chroma Subsampling(…contd.)
r 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 are used in JPEG and
MPEG
r 256-level gray-scale JPEG images
8x8 : 8x8 : 8x8 aren't usually much smaller than their
24-bit color counterparts, because
4:4:4
most JPEG implementations
aggressively subsample the color
information. Color data therefore
represents a small percentage of the
total file size.

8x8 : 4x4 : 4x4

8x8 : 8x4 : 8x4 4:2:2 8x8 : 8x2 : 8x2 4:1:1
8x8 : 8x2 : 0x0 4:2:0

HDTV
Name Lines Aspect Opt. P/I Freq.
Ratio View MHz
dist
HDTV 1050 16:9 2.5H P 8
USA, ana
HDTV 1250 16:9 2.4 P 9
Eur, ana
HDTV 1125 16:9 3.3 I 20
NHK
NTSC© 525 4:3 7 I 4.2
NTSC 525 4:3 5 P 4.2
PAL© 625 4:3 6 I 5.5
PAL 625 4:3 4.3 P 5.5

SECAM© 625 4:3 6 I 6

SECAM 625 4:3 4.3 P 6

© : Conventional

Computer Video Format

H Depends on the i/p and o/p devices (digitizers) for motion video
medium.
H Digitizers differ in frame resolution, quantization and frame rate
m IRIS video board VINO takes NTSC video signal and after digitization
can achieve frame resolution of 640x480 pixels, 8 bits/pixel and 4 fps.
m SunVideo digitizer captures NTSC video signal in the form of an RGB
signal with frame resolution of 320x240 pixels, 8 bits/pixel and 30
fps.
Computer video controller standards
m The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA):
320 x 240 pixels x 2 bits/pixel = 16,000 bytes (storage capacity per image)
m The Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA):
640 x 350 pixels x 4 bits/pixel = 112,000 bytes
m The Video Graphics Array (VGA):
640 x 480 pixels x 8 bits/pixel = 307,200 bytes
m The 8514/A Display Adapter Mode:
1024 x 768 pixels x 8 bits/pixel = 786,432 bytes
m The Extended Graphics Array (XGA):
1024x768 at 256 colors or 640x480 at 65,000 colors
m The Super VGA (SVGS):
Upto 1024x768 pixels x 24 bits/pixel = 2,359,296 bytes