Chapter 5

Fundamental Concepts in Video

 Fundamental Concepts in Video

• Video is a series of images. When this series of

images are displayed on screen at fast speed ( e.g
30 images per second), we see a perceived motion.
• It projects single images at a fast rate producing the
illusion of continuous motion.
• These single images are called frames.
• The rate at which the frames are projected is
generally between 24 and 30 frames per second
(fps).
• The rate at which these images are presented is
referred to as the Frame Rate. 2
 Video
• A single image is called frame and video is a series
of frames.
• An image just like conventional images is
modeled as a matrix of pixels.
• Studies have shown that a rate of 30 frames a
second is good enough to simulate smooth
motion.
• Each screen-full of video is made up of thousands
of pixels.
• A pixel is the smallest unit of an image. A pixel
can display only one color at a time.
 video
• There are two types of video:
• Analog Video
• Digital Video

Analog video is represented as a continuous (time-varying) signal

Digital video is represented as a sequence of digital images.

 Analog Video

• Analog technology requires information representing

images and sound to be in a real- time continuous-
scale electric signal between sources and receivers.
• It is used throughout the television industry. For
television, images and sound are converted into
electric signals by transducers.
• Distortion of images and noise are common
problems for analog video.
• In an analogue video signal, each frame is
represented by a fluctuating voltage signal.
• This is known as an analogue waveform.
 Analogue
• Analog formats are susceptible to loss due to
transmission noise effects.
• Quality loss is also possible from one generation
to another.
• This type of loss is like photocopying, in which a
copy of a copy is never as good as the original.
 Digital video
• Digital technology is based on images represented in
the form of bits.
• A digital video signal is actually a pattern of 1's and
0's that represent the video image.
• With a digital video signal, there is no variation in the
original signal once it is captured on to computer
disc.
• Therefore, the image does not lose any of its original
sharpness and clarity.
• The image is an exact copy of the original.
• A computer is the most common form of digital
 Digital video
• Even though the data is digital, virtually all digital
formats are still stored on sequential tapes.
• There are two significant advantages for using
computers for digital video:
the ability to randomly access the storage of video and
Compress the video stored.
• Computer-based digital video is defined as a
series of individual images and associated audio.
• These elements are stored in a format in which
both elements (pixel and sound sample) are
represented as a series of binary digits (bits).
 Analog vs. Digital Video
• An analog video can be very similar to the original
video copied, but it is not identical.
• Digital copies will always be identical and will not
loose their sharpness and clarity over time.
• However, digital video has the limitation of the
amount of RAM available, whereas this is not a
factor with analog video.
• Digital technology allows for easy editing and
enhancing of videos.
• Storage of the analog video tapes is much more
cumbersome than digital video CDs.
 Displaying Video
• There are two ways of displaying video on screen:

•Progressive scan
•Interlaced scan
• Interlaced video displays even and odd scan lines as separate fields.
The even scan lines are drawn on the screen, then the odd scan
lines are drawn on the screen. Two of these even and odd scan line
fields make up one video frame.
• Interlaced scan is a display signal type in which one-half of the
horizontal pixel rows are refreshed in one cycle and the other half in
the next, meaning that two complete scans are required to display
the screen image.
 Interlaced Scanning

• Interlaced scanning writes every second line of the

picture during a scan, and writes the other half
during the next sweep.
• Doing that we only need 25/30 pictures per second.
• This idea of splitting up the image into two parts
became known as interlacing and the splitted up
pictures as fields.
• Graphically seen a field is basically a picture with
every second line black/white.
• Here is an image that shows interlacing so that you
can better imagine what happens.
 interlace
. During the first scan the upper field
is written on screen. The first, 3rd,
5th, etc. line is written and after
writing each line the electron
beam moves to the left again
before writing the next line.

Once all the odd lines have been

written the electron beam travels
back to the upper left of the screen
and starts writing the even lines.
 Progressive Scanning

• PC CRT displays are fundamentally different from

TV screens.
• Monitor writes a whole picture per scan.
• Progressive scan updates all the lines on the
screen at the same time, 60 times every second.
• This is known as progressive scanning. Today all PC
screens write a picture like this.
 Progressive scan
.
 Recording Video

• CCDs (Charge Coupled Devices) a chip containing

a series of tiny, light-sensitive photosites.
• It forms the heart of all electronic and digital
cameras.
• CCDs can be thought of as film for electronic
cameras.
• CCDs consist of thousands or even millions of
cells, each of which is light-sensitive and capable
of producing varying amounts of charge in
response to the amount of light they receive.
 Cont’d…
• Digital camera uses lens which focuses the image
onto a Charge Coupled Device (CCD), which then
converts the image into electrical pulses.
• These pulses are then saved into memory. In
short, Just as the film in a conventional camera
records an image when light hits it, the CCD
records the image electronically.
• The photosites convert light into electrons.
 Cont’d…
• The electrons pass through an analog-to-digital
converter, which produces a file of encoded digital
information in which bits represent the color and
tonal values of a subject.

• The performance of a CCD is often measured by

its output resolution, which in turn is a function of
the number of photosites on the CCD's surface.
 Types of Color Video Signals
1. Component video
• Each primary is sent as a separate video signal. The
primaries can either be RGB or a luminance-chrominance
transformation of them (e.g., YIQ, YUV).
• Best color reproduction
• Requires more bandwidth and good
synchronization of the three components
• Component video takes the different components of the
video and breaks them into separate signals.
• Improvements to component video have led to many
video formats, including S-Video, RGB etc.
• uses two wires: one for luminance and another for a
composite chrominance signal.
 Component video
• Higher end video systems, such as for studios,
make use of three separate video signals for the
red, green, and blue image planes. This is referred
to as component video.
• This kind of system has three wires (and
connectors) connecting the camera or other
devices to a TV or monitor.
 5.3.1 Analog Display Interfaces
• Analog video signals are often transmitted in one of three different
interfaces:
– Component video,
– Composite video, and
– S-video.
• Figure 5.7 shows the typical connectors for them

Fig. 5.7 Connectors for typical analog display interfaces. From left to right: Component
video, Composite video, S-video, and VGA

22
 Cont’d…
2. Composite video
• Composite video is the standard that can connect almost all
consumer video equipment - television sets, DVD players,
VCRs and camcorders
• Color (chrominance) and luminance(intensity) signals are
mixed into a single carrier wave. Some interference between
the two signals is inevitable.
• Composite video combines the three basic elements of a
video picture (color, brightness, and synchronization data)
into a single combined ("composite") signal.
• Due to the compositing (or combining) of the video
components, the quality of composite video is marginal at
best.
• the results are color bleeding, low clarity and high
 Cont’d…
3. S-Video (Separated video)
• a method of transmitting high-quality television
signals from a video recorder, video camera, etc. by
sending the signals for chrominance and luminance
separately.
• a compromise between component analog video
and the composite video.
• It uses two lines, one for luminance and another for
composite chrominance signal.
• This video signal, transmitted with color and
brightness on two separate channels, makes for a
sharper picture image, with less granularity, on the
Comparison between types of video signals
 Video Broadcasting Standards/ TV standards

1. PAL (Phase Alternate Line)

• PAL uses 625 horizontal lines at a field rate of 50 fields per second
(or 25 frames persecond).
• Only 576 of these lines are used for picture information with the
remaining 49 lines used for sync or holding additional information
such as closed captioning.
• It is used in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Europe.
• Scans 625 lines per frame, 25 frames per second (40 msec/frame)
• Interlaced, each frame is divided into 2 fields, 312.5 lines/field
• For color representation, PAL uses YUV (YCbCr) color model
• In PAL,
– 5.5 MHz is allocated to Y,
– 1.8 MHz each to U and V
 2. SECAM (Sequential Color with Memory)
• SECAM uses the same bandwidth as PAL but
transmits the color information sequentially. It is
used in France, East Europe, etc
• SECAM (Systeme Electronic Pour Couleur Avec
Memoire) is very similar to PAL.
• It specifies the same number of scan lines and
frames per second.
• It is the broadcast standard for France, Russia, and
parts of Africa and Eastern Europe.
 3. NTSC (National Television Standards Committee)

• NTSC is a black-and-white and color compatible 525-line

system that scans a nominal 30 interlaced television
picture frames per second. Used in USA, Canada, and
Japan.
• 525 scan lines per frame, 30 frames per second (or be
exact, 29.97 fps, 33.37 sec/frame)
• Interlaced, each frame is divided into 2 fields, 262.5
lines/field
• 20 lines reserved for control information at the
beginning of each field
• So a maximum of 485 lines of visible data
• More lines means more visual information, which
equals better picture quality and resolution.
 NTSC Video Scan Line

• Each line takes 63.5 microseconds to scan.

Horizontal retrace takes 10 microseconds (with 5
microseconds horizontal synch pulse embedded),
so the active line time is 53.5 microseconds.
 NTSC Video Color Representation/Compression

• For color representation, NTSC uses YIQ color

model.
• Eye is most sensitive to Y, next to I, next to Q.(Eye is
more sensitive to Orange-Blue range (I) than in Purple-
Green range (Q)).
• This is still Analog Compression:
• In NTSC,
– 4 MHz is allocated to Y,
– 1.5 MHz to I,
– 0.6 MHz to Q.
Comparison between types
 HDTV (High Definition Television)
• High-Definition television (HDTV) means broadcast of
television signals with a higher resolution than traditional
formats (NTSC, SECAM, PAL) allow.
• Except for early analog formats in Europe and Japan,
HDTV is broadcasted digitally, and therefore its
introduction sometimes coincides with the introduction
of digital television (DTV).
– Modern plasma television uses this
– It consists of 720-1080 lines and higher number of pixels (as
many as 1920 pixels).
– Having a choice in between progressive and interlaced is one
advantage of HDTV.
• Many people have their preferences
 HDTV vs Existing Signals (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM)

• The HDTV signal is digital resulting in crystal clear,

noise-free pictures and CD quality sound.
• It has many viewer benefits like choosing
between interlaced or progressive scanning.
 File Formats

• File formats in the PC platform are indicated

by the 3 letter filename extension.
• .mov= QuickTime Movie Format
• .avi= Windows movie format
• .mpg =MPEG file format
Exam area
 Factors of Digital Video
• With digital video, four factors have to be kept in
mind. These are :
• Frame rate
• Spatial Resolution
• Color Resolution
• Image Quality
 Frame Rate
• The standard for displaying any type of non-film
video is 30 frames per second (film is 24 frames per
second).
• This means that the video is made up of 30 (or 24)
pictures or frames for every second of video.
• Additionally these frames are split in half (odd lines
and even lines), to form what are called fields.
• 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.
 Color Resolution
• Color resolution refers to the number of colors
displayed on the screen at one time.
• Computers deal with color in an RGB (red-green-
blue) format, while video uses a variety of
formats.
• One of the most common video formats is called
YUV.
• Although there is no direct correlation between
RGB and YUV, they are similar in that they both
have varying levels of color depth (maximum
number of colours).
 Spatial Resolution
• Spatial resolution - or in other words, "How big is the
picture?".
• Since PC and Macintosh computers generally have
resolutions in excess of 640 by 480, most people assume
that this resolution is the video standard.
• A standard analogue video signal displays a full, over
scanned image without the borders common to computer
screens.
• The National Television Standards Committee ( NTSC)
standard used in North America and Japanese Television
uses a 768 by 484 display.
• The Phase Alternative system (PAL) standard for European
television is slightly larger at 768 by 576. Most countries
endorse one or the other, but never both.
 Image Quality

• The last, and most important factor is video

quality.
• The final objective is video that looks acceptable
for your application.
• For some this may be 1/4 screen, 15 frames per
second (fps), at 8 bits per pixel.
• Other requires a full screen (768 by 484), full
frame rate video, at 24 bits per pixel (16.7
million colours).