Image and Video References

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. 

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

>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.

The book I have is "Techniques and Standards for Image Video
and Audio Coding" by K.R.Rao and J.J.Hwang, which I like.

 From the NTSC days, luminance/chrominance allows the signal
to be received by monochrome sets, and also saves the bandwidth
by using reduced bandwidth for the color subcarrier.

One that I always thought interesting about NTSC is that they
studied the resolution of the eye for different color pairs and
chose the YIQ coding, a 33 degree rotation of the color
matrix, that is, a 33 degree phase shift.  The axes for
maximum and minimum color resolution do not align with the
RGB axis, but are rotated from them.

The color burst is along an axis making it easy to decode,
to less than full resolution, along the R and B axis, for
YUV.   Around the time that HDTV standards were being formed
companies started selling Enhanced Definition TV, using the proper
decoding of the NTSC standard, then about 40 years old.

(Well, generating the proper decoder using vacuum tubes
for the decoding matrix would have been a little expensive.)

(Sometime around 1980 I went to my college library to find a
book about color TV standards.  From the card catalog "Television Today
and Tomorrow" sounded good.  It turned out that it was before CRTs were 
used for television, and described spinning disks and neon lamps.)

-- glen

glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> 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.
>
>>   2. The composite video, component video, PAL, and NTSC
>>   standards.
>
>>   3. MPEG4 video and audio coding.
>
> The book I have is "Techniques and Standards for Image Video and Audio Coding" by K.R.Rao and J.J.Hwang, which I like.

Hey Glen, thanks! I actually cancelled Poynton's order and
ordered this Rao book - looks excellent! 

On reading some of Poynton's material more closely (originally I had
just viewed the topics, which were extremely appropriate to my
search), I found that I didn't care for his style of writing. (He
seems to have a tendence to throw a bunch of unrelated and/or undefined
stuff in when explaining a concept.)
-- 
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