Image and Video References

Hi Folks,

I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
references to the following topics:

  1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
  its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
  to RGB, and any other pertinent info. 

  2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
  standards.

  3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.

Believe it or not Google didn't seem to help much.
-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "Watching all the days go by...    
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  Who are you and who am I?"
%%% 919-577-9882                % 'Mission (A World Record)', 
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           % *A New World Record*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

Randy Yates wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
> references to the following topics:
>
>   1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
>   its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
>   to RGB, and any other pertinent info.

    I have not much idea of video coding, ITU H.261, H.263
    you can get through the www.itu.int

>
>   2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>   standards.

     Check the above standards.
>
>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.

    For the Audio Coding check for the ITU G.711, G.72X series
    on the same above...
>
> Believe it or not Google didn't seem to help much.


  Hope the above may help and if not let me know as from the
  above you can get the specs and the source code too (In some cases)
  Regards
  Ranjeet

> --
> %  Randy Yates                  % "Watching all the days go by...
> %% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  Who are you and who am I?"
> %%% 919-577-9882                % 'Mission (A World Record)',
> %%%% <yates@ieee.org>           % *A New World Record*, ELO
> http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

Randy Yates wrote:

> I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
> references to the following topics:
>
>   1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
>   its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
>   to RGB, and any other pertinent info.

Charles Poynton's Color FAQ is the best on-line for most color-related
stuff:

http://www.poynton.com/ColorFAQ.html

It possibly won't help much with the bit depths; check out his list of
references.


>   2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>   standards.

Charles Poynton's book "A Technical Introduction to Digital Video" is
decent.

>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.

Have a browse through the whole site:

http://www.poynton.com/

If he doesn't have what you want, check out his references.

:-)

Ciao,

Peter K.

"Randy Yates" <yates@ieee.org> wrote in message 
news:1x80daul.fsf@ieee.org...
> Hi Folks,
>
> I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
> references to the following topics:
>
>  1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
>  its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
>  to RGB, and any other pertinent info.
>
>  2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>  standards.
>
>  3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.
>
> Believe it or not Google didn't seem to help much.
> -- 
> %  Randy Yates                  % "Watching all the days go by...
> %% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  Who are you and who am I?"
> %%% 919-577-9882                % 'Mission (A World Record)',
> %%%% <yates@ieee.org>           % *A New World Record*, ELO
> http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

Hello Randy,

I recall a book in my high school library that explained in complete detail 
the how's and why's of NTSC. I saw this book back in the 70's. I remember a 
psychological basis was used to justify the unequal lowpassing of the I and 
Q color signals. Basically as an object subtends a smaller and smaller field 
of view, the perceived color saturation diminishes. And this rate of 
diminishment was different for the red-green and yellow-blue color vectors. 
There is biological evidence that while the retina senses red, blue, and 
green, the nerve signals are converted to red-green, yellow blue, and 
black-white signals in eye. NTSC exploits this. This desaturation phenomenon 
was used as a basis for bandwidth reduction for a monochrome (B&W) 
compatible signal. The book had all of the equations along with their 
justification. I have no idea how my school ended up with such a book, but 
it was really neat. It was that book that also gave the reasoning behind the 
changing of the scan rates from 60/15750 (black and white) to (IIRC) 
59.62/15734.xxx (color NTSC) Hz for the vertical and horizontal 
respectively. I know the colorburst frequency 3.57954MHz was chosen to be an 
integral multiple of one half of the sampling rate. The audio subcarrier 
frequency of 4.5MHz played a role in the frequency selection as one doesn't 
want intermod products in the video.

I'll see if I can recall more. I've lamented not obtaining my own copy of 
that book. It may have been published by RCA. I still live in the city where 
I went to high school, but somehow I doubt they still have that book.

Clay

"Clay S. Turner" <Physics@Bellsouth.net> writes:
> [...]

Sounds like a great book - I'd like to see it.
-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "Ticket to the moon, flight leaves here today 
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  from Satellite 2"
%%% 919-577-9882                % 'Ticket To The Moon' 
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           % *Time*, Electric Light Orchestra
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

I have a book here...

"Digital Video Processing" by A Tekalp that goes into a lot of that
stuff.  It's probably not as authoritive as the standards documents,
but it discusses analog video, digitising, compression and processing
at a good level of detail.

Another is "Video Demystified" but I can't remember that author.

A

Randy Yates wrote:
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
> references to the following topics:
> 
>   1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
>   its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
>   to RGB, and any other pertinent info.
> 
>   2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>   standards.
> 
>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.

Randy,

I am no video expert, but faced with a situation to work on video coding on
short notice, I did some research.

MPEG4 and H.264 - by Ian Richardson is a good book that I found. H.263 is also
a less complicated standard too look at, to understand the general flow of
processing. About the colour depth and other schemes, I generally relied on
wikipedia and the web. "Video Demystified" book has lots of info about PAL and
NTSC, but lacks depth on any of the topics it covers. It still didn't
demystify many of my video concepts. 

I read afew other recommendations about the book by Barry Haskel and Arun
Netravali. It is supposedly a very fundamental book on video and image coding,
but probably a bit dated on algorithms used in newer standards like H.264.

-- 
   Ramakrishnan

Hi Randy,

IIRC, the docs for Analog Devices' Blackfin EZ-KIT contains a
discussion of the NTSC format (I'm pretty sure you can get 'em from the
website, with a little digging). Googling on "NTSC timing" gets some
hits, too.

HTH,

Rick Armstrong

"Peter K." <p.kootsookos@iolfree.ie> writes:

> Randy Yates wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
>> references to the following topics:
>>
>>   1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
>>   its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
>>   to RGB, and any other pertinent info.
>
> Charles Poynton's Color FAQ is the best on-line for most color-related
> stuff:
>
> http://www.poynton.com/ColorFAQ.html
>
> It possibly won't help much with the bit depths; check out his list of
> references.
>
>
>>   2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>>   standards.
>
> Charles Poynton's book "A Technical Introduction to Digital Video" is
> decent.
>
>>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.
>
> Have a browse through the whole site:
>
> http://www.poynton.com/
>
> If he doesn't have what you want, check out his references.
>
> :-)
>
> Ciao,
>
> Peter K.

As usual, Peter, you are a scholar and a gentleman. Thank you for
these excellent references.
-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "How's life on earth? 
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  ... What is it worth?" 
%%% 919-577-9882                % 'Mission (A World Record)', 
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           % *A New World Record*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan <rkrishnan@ti.com> writes:

> Randy Yates wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Folks,
>> 
>> I'm looking for authoritative and in-depth on-line or hardcopy
>> references to the following topics:
>> 
>>   1. The YUV color scheme and the reason for the choices in
>>   its various bit-depths (i.e., 6-2-2, etc.), how it maps
>>   to RGB, and any other pertinent info.
>> 
>>   2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>>   standards.
>> 
>>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.
>
> Randy,
>
> I am no video expert, but faced with a situation to work on video coding on
> short notice, I did some research.
>
> MPEG4 and H.264 - by Ian Richardson is a good book that I found. H.263 is also
> a less complicated standard too look at, to understand the general flow of
> processing. About the colour depth and other schemes, I generally relied on
> wikipedia and the web. "Video Demystified" book has lots of info about PAL and
> NTSC, but lacks depth on any of the topics it covers. It still didn't
> demystify many of my video concepts. 
>
> I read afew other recommendations about the book by Barry Haskel and Arun
> Netravali. It is supposedly a very fundamental book on video and image coding,
> but probably a bit dated on algorithms used in newer standards like H.264.
>
> -- 
>    Ramakrishnan

Thanks Ramakrishnan for your time in writing these suggestions/reviews. I think,
however, I will go with Poyton's book (referred by Peter) as it has more of the
solid fundamentals I seek. MPEG4 is graduate school - I'm still in 4th grade!

--Randy


-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "The dreamer, the unwoken fool - 
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %  in dreams, no pain will kiss the brow..."
%%% 919-577-9882                %  
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           % 'Eldorado Overture', *Eldorado*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr