VIDEO SIGNAL

Painting Images on the Screen

A television picture in North America is made up of 30 frames per second flashing
on the screen; in Europe (also in India) its 25. Movies use 24 frames per second.
The frames, which are nothing more than still images are flashed on the screen so
fast they blend together seamlessly into a moving image.
Each frame is "painted" onto the TV screen by electron guns that scan the screen
one line (left to right) at a time, moving from top to bottom. At the end of each
line, the beam sweeps back and down a line, before it paints another line. As the
beam moves, it also varies in intensity, depending on the brightness of the part of
picture its painting. The stronger the beam, the more light is seen on the screen. A
color TV uses three electron guns, one each for red, blue and greenthe primary
colors. Each gun paints its own color. When all three guns paint the same area, you
get whiteit's an additive color system.
When the TV standards were first adopted many years ago, three incompatible
standards emerged in different parts of the world. Which standard your camera
uses depends on where you live and determines how many lines are scanned onto
your screen.

In North America, Japan and some other countries, television uses 525 scan
lines for each picture. This standard is called NTSC (National Television
Standards Committee).
In England, Europe, and parts of Asia, television uses 625 scan lines. This
is called PAL (Phase Alternating Line)
France, as you might expect, went its own way with SECAM (Se'quentiel
Couleur 'a Memorie) which has been adopted by a few other countries.

In NTSC only 480 of the 525 available scan lines are used for the picture, and in
PAL's only 576 of the 625 scan lines. The other lines are used for information
about the picture.
Interlaced vs. Progressive Scans
When the electron gun in the CRT paints the image on the screen, it actually
illuminates dots on a phosphorus coating on the back of the screen. These dots
slowly fade as the beam moves on. During the early days of TV, the dots would
fade too much before the beam got around to painting them again so the image
seemed to flicker.

To fix this problem the image wasnt painted from top to bottom, one line at a
time. Instead, the odd lines were painted first and then the even lines. Interlacing
the image in this way prevented the bothersome flicker. Since each frame of the
movie or video was now painted in two parts, the parts were called fields and two
fields are combined to make a frame. The first field contains odd lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
and so on, while the second field contains even lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and so on.

NTSC paints 60 fields or 30 full frames per second. Since it has 525 scan
lines, its sometimes referred to as 525/60.
PAL and SECAM paints 50 fields or 25 full frames per second. Since it has
625 scan lines, its sometimes referred to as 625/50.

Computer monitors and High Definition TV have found ways to avoid flicker
problems so they dont need to interlace images the same way as traditional TV
sets. To capture non-interlaced images, the camera must be able to capture a
progressive scan.
What's Video Resolution?
The term resolution refers to the ability of an imaging system to capture fine
details. The higher the resolution, the sharper the images. In digital video,
resolution is calculated differently than it is for digital cameras.
The vertical resolution of a digital video image is determined by the number of
scan lines in the image.
The horizontal resolution is the rate at which the moving beam can turn on and
off to paint "dots" of color on the screen. This can happen only so fast because it
takes time for the circuits to switch from black to white. The horizontal resolution
is calculated only for a horizontal distance that's equal to the picture height.
DV cameras store video in component format, which produces better color
accuracy than composite format used earlier in S-Video formats. Colors stay
where they belong and dont spill over into adjacent areas. The reason for this is
that component video sends the three primary colors (red, green, and blue) on
separate wires within the cable.
DV has a much better signal to noise ratio. So the image is much clearer with less
static.

RGB
While generating a display, all modern computers deal with graphics
internally as individual pixels. Each pixel is defined as having a certain colour
value, defined by its RED, GREEN and BLUE components. These are each
assigned a numerical value. component video sends the three primary colors
separately.
Composite Video
This uses one wire Generally Yellow in colour) with its own shielding to carry the
video information. Usually accompanied by a red and/or white AUDIO cable. Dot
crawl is a serious problem with composite video, and colour bleed, particularly
with the colour red, is very noticeable.
FIREWIRE (IEEE 1394, i.Link)
IEEE 1394
FireWire
i.Link

(named after the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers),

(a registered trademark of Apple),
(a trademark of Sony Electronics, Inc).

Whatever FireWire is called, its become the standard digital audio/video interface
for all DV equipment. Its ability to transfer up to 400 Megabits (and more) per
second makes it the fastest available connection between camcorders and other
digital video hardware such as computers. Its speed is a very good thing because
digital video equipment handles vast amounts of data, up to 11 gigabytes on a
single 60-minute tape. But FireWire is up to the task with enough capacity to
handle two simultaneous channels of broadcast quality, full-motion video and CDquality stereo audio.
FireWire cables have two different types of connectors, 6 pin or 4 pin. There are
three different combinations for the connectors. 6 to 6 pin, 4 to 4 pin and 4 to 6
pin.
FireWire 400: It can transfer data between devices at 100, 200, or 400Mbits
FireWire 800: IEEE 1394b introduced FireWire 800 (Apple's name for the 9conductor "S800 bilingual" version of the IEEE 1394b standard). This
specification and corresponding products allow a transfer rate of
786.432 Mbit/s full-duplex via a new encoding scheme termed beta mode. It is
backwards compatible with the slower rates and 6-conductor alpha connectors of
FireWire 400.
VGA (The video graphics array)

The VGA port became the standard input for computer monitors in the 1990s.
Digital video interface (DVI) ports came thereafter to support the increased
resolution potential found in more modern LCD monitors. High-definition
multimedia interface ports are the latest of the three and are the best choice for
high-quality video.
A VGA port and cable converts digital data signals produced within a
graphics card into an analog signal during transmission to a monitor. There, it is
then converted back to a digital signal and projected as an image on the screen.
A DVI port and cable, on the other hand, leaves the signal a digital one and
passes image data directly to the screen.
HDMI: High Definition Multimedia Interface
HDMI is an industry standard digital interface that supports both audio and
video data components.
HDMI has quickly become the standard for connecting consumer electronic
devices together and was pioneered by a group of companies including Sony,
Philips, Hitachi and Matsushita.
HDMI supports standard, enhanced, or high-definition video as well as multichannel digital audio on a single industry standard cable. HDMI is capable of
carrying any type of compressed audio data such as Dolby or DTS.
HDMI can transmit all HDTV standards and supports 8 channel digital audio
and up to 5Gbps (Giga bits per second ) bandwidth.
What video types does HDMI support?
The HDMI standard can support exisiting high definition video formats of 720p,
1080i and 1080p. It also has the potential to support enhanced definition formats
such as 480p as well as the more common formats such as PAL and NTSC.
720p is the resolution of 1280x720 pixels. The p stands for progressive format.
1080i is the resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The i stands for interlaced format.
1080p is the resolution of 1920x1080 pixels.
480p is the resolution of 640x480 pixels with an aspect ratio of 4:3.