VCN (Video, Compression, Networking) Glossary

This is a collection of often used and misused technical terms regarding video, compression and networking.

Many sources contributed to this list.

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• 4:2:2 means 2:1 horizontal downsampling, no vertical downsampling. (Think "4 Y samples for every 2 Cb and 2 Cr samples in a scanline".)
• 4:1:1 *ought* to mean 4:1 horizontal downsampling, no vertical. (Think "4 Y samples for every 1 Cb and 1 Cr samples in a scanline".) But it is often misused to mean the same as:
• 4:2:0 means 2:1 horizontal and 2:1 vertical downsampling. (Think "I want some of whatever these guys were taking.")

Arithmetic coding removes this restriction by representing messages as intervals of the real numbers between 0 and 1. Initially, the range of values for coding a text is the entire interval [0, 1]. As encoding proceeds, this range narrows while the number of bits required to represent it expands. Frequently occurring characters reduce the range less than characters occurring infrequently, and thus add fewer bits to the length of an encoded message.

ATM

Green dominates the luma channel: about 59% of the luma signal comprises green information. Therefore it is sensible, and advantageous for signal-to-noise reasons, to base the two colour channels on blue and 1red. The simplest way to remove luma from each of these is to subtract it to form the difference between a primary colour and luma. Hence, the basic video colour-difference pair is (B-Y), (R-Y) [pronounced "B minus Y, R minus Y"].

The (B-Y) signal reaches its extreme values at blue (R=0, G=0, B=1; Y=0.114; B-Y=+0.886) and at yellow (R=1, G=1, B=0; Y=0.886; B-Y=-0.886). Similarly, the extrema of (R-Y), +-0.701, occur at red and cyan. These are inconvenient values for both digital and analog systems. The colour spaces YPbPr, YCbCr, PhotoYCC and YUV are simply scaled versions of (Y, B-Y, R-Y) that place the extrema of the colour difference channels at more convenient values.

Bridge

The router component maps out the optimal paths for the movement of data from one point on the network to another. Since the brouter can handle the functions of both bridges and routers, as well as bypass the need for the translation across application protocols with gateways, the device offers significant cost reductions in network development and integration.

CCITT

This is a consumer electronics format that uses the optical disc in combination with a computer to provide a home entertainment system that delivers music, graphics, text, animation, and video in the living room. Unlike a CD-ROM drive, a CD-I player is a standalone system that requires no external computer. It plugs directly into a TV and stereo system and comes with a remote control to allow the user to interact with software programs sold on discs. It looks and feels much like a CD player except that you get images as well as music out of it and you can actively control what happens. In fact, it is a CD-DA player and all of your standard music CDs will play on a CD-I player; there is just no video in that case.

For a CD-I disk, there may be as few as 1 or as many as 99 data tracks. The sector size in the data tracks of a CD-I disk is approximately 2 kbytes. Sectors are randomly accessible, and, in the case of CD-I, sectors can be multiplexed in up to 16 channels for audio and 32 channels for all other data types. For audio these channels are equivalent to having 16 parallel audio data channels instantly accessible during the playing of a disk.

If you want information about Philips CD-I products, you can call these numbers:

A CD-ROM has several advantages over other forms of data storage, and a few disadvantages. A CD-ROM can hold about 650 megabytes of data, the equivalent of thousands of floppy discs. CD-ROMs are not damaged by magnetic fields or the xrays in airport scanners. The data on a CD-ROM can be accessed much faster than a tape, but CD-ROMs are 10 to 20 times slower than hard discs.

You cannot write to a CD-ROM. You buy a disc with the data already recorded on it. There are thousands of titles available.

CD-XA

Announced in August 1988 by Microsoft, Philips, and Sony, the CD-ROM XA (for Extended Architecture) format incorporates audio from the CD-I format. It is consistent with ISO 9660, (the volume and the structure of CD-ROM), is an application extension of the Yellow Book, and draws on the Green Book.

CD-XA defines another way of formatting sectors on a CD-ROM, including headers in the sectors that describe the type (audio, video, data) and some additional info (markers, resolution in case of a video or audio sector, file numbers, etc).

The data written on a CD-XA can still be in ISO9660 file system format and therefore be readable by MSCDEX and Unix CD-ROM file system translators. A CD-I player can also read CD-XA discs even if its own `Green Book' file system only resembles ISO9660 and isn't fully compatible. However, when a disc is inserted in a CD-I player, the player tries to load an executable application from the CD-XA, normally some 68000 application in the /CDI directory. Its name is stored in the disc's primary volume descriptor. CD-XA bridge discs, like Kodak's Photo CDs, do have such an application, ordinary CD-XA discs don't.

A CD-DA drive is a CD-ROM drive but with some of the compressed audio capabilities found in a CD-I player (called ADPCM). This allows interleaving of audio and other data so that an XA drive can play audio and display pictures (or other things) simultaneously. There is special hardware in an XA drive controller to handle the audio playback. This format came from a desire to inject some of the features of CD-I back into the professional market.

Cell Compression (from Sun Microsystem Inc.)

There are two flavors of Cell: the original called Cell or CellA, and a newer flavor called CellB. CellA is designed for use many times video, where one does not mind that the encoder runs at less than real time. For example, CD-ROM playback, distance learning, video help for applications. CellB is designed for use once video where the encoder must run at real time (interactive) rates. For example, video mail and video conferencing.

Both flavors of cell use the same basic technique of representing each 4x4 pixel block with a 16-bit bitmask and two 8-bit vector quantized codebook indices. This produces a compression of 12-1 (or 8-1) since each 16 pixel block is represented by 32 bits (16-bit mask, and two 8-bit codebook indices). In both flavors, further compression is accomplished by checking current blocks against the spatially equivalent block in the previous frame. If the new block is "close enough" to the old block, the block is coded as a skip code. Consecutive skip codes are run-length encoded for further compression. Modifying the definition of close enough allows one to trade off quality and compression rates. Both version of Cell typically compress video images down to about .75 to .5 bits/pixel.

Both flavors have many similar steps in the early part of compression. For each 4x4 block, the compressor calculates the average luma of the 16 pixels. It then partions the pixels into two groups, those whose luma is above the average and those whose luma is below the average. The compressor sets the 16-bit bitmask based on which pixels are in each partition. The compressor then calculates a color to represent each partition.

In Cell, the compressor calculates an average color of each partion, it then does a vector quantization against the Cell codebook (which is just a color-map). The encoded block is the 16-bit mask and the two 8-bit colormap indices. The compressor maintains statistics about how much error each codebook entry is responsible for and how many times each codebook entry is used. It uses these numbers to adaptively refine the codebook on each frame. Changed codebooks are sent in the bitstream.

In CellB, the compressor calculates the average luma for each partition and the average chroma for the entire block. This gives two colors [Y_lo, Cb_ave, Cr_ave] and [Y_hi, Cb_ave, Cr_ave]. The pair [Y_lo, Y_hi] is vector quantized against the Y/Y codebook and the pair [Cb_ave, Cr_ave] is vector quantized against the Cr/Cb codebook. Here the encoded block is the 16-bit mask and the two 8-bit VQ indices. Both of CellB's codebooks are fixed. This allows both the compressor and decompressor to run at high-speed by using table lookups. Both codebooks are designed with the human visual system in mind. They are not just uniform partition of the Y/Y or Cr/Cb space. Each codebook has fewer than 256 entries.

Cell (or CellA) is supported in XIL 1.0 from SMI. It is part of Solaris 2.2. CellB is supported in XIL 1.1 from SMI. It will be part of Solaris 2.3 when that becomes available. Complete bitstream definitions for both flavors of cell are in the XIL 1.1 programmer's guide. There is some discussion of the CellA bitstream in the XIL 1.0 programmer's guide.

CellB was used for the SMI Scott McNealy holiday broadcast, where he talk to the company in real-time over Sun Wide Area Network. This broadcast reach from Tokyo Japan to Munich Germany with over 3000 known viewers.

CIF

The uncompressed bit rates for transmitting CIF at 29.97 frames/sec is 36.45 Mbit/sec.

DPCM (Differential Pulse Code Modulation)

The reason for using the DPCM structure is that for most sources of practical interest, the variance of the prediction error is substantially smaller than that of the source.

DVI (Digital Video Interactive)

The DVI concept originated in 1983 in the inventive environment of the David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey, then also known as RCA Laboratories. The ongoing research and development of television since the early days of the Laboratories was extending into the digital domain, with work on digital tuners, and digital image processing algorithms that could be reduced to cost-effective hardware for mass-market consumer television.

EACEM

Entropy is a measure of the information contained in message, it's the lower bound for compression.

ESAC

The intended applications of this international standard are for videophone and videoconferencing. Therefore, the recommended video coding algorithm has to be able to operate in real time with minimum delay. For p = 1 or 2, due to severely limited available bit rate, only desktop face-to-face visual communication (often referred to as videophone) is appropriate. For p>=6, due to the additional available bit rate, more complex pictures can be transmitted with better quality. This is, therefore, more suitable for videoconferencing.

HDTV

This system is the basis for international standards for videotelephony, is used for some HDTV demonstrations, and is the prototype from which MPEG was designed. Its utility has been demonstrated for video sequence, and the DCT concentrates the remaining energy into a small number of transform coefficients that can be quantized and compactly represented.

The key feature of this coder is the presence of a complete decoder within it. The difference between the current frame as represented as the receiver and the incoming frame is processed. In the basis design, therefore, the receiver must track the transmitter precisely, the decoder at the receiver and the decoder at the transmitter must match. The system is sensitive to channel errors and does not permit random access. However, it is on the order of three to four times as efficient as one that uses no prediction.

In practice, this coder is modified to suit specific application. The standard telephony model uses a forced update of the decoded frame so that channel errors do not propagate. When a participant enters the conversation late or alternates between image sources, residual errors die out and a clear image is obtained after a few frames. Similar techniques are used in versions of this coder being developed for direct satellite television broadcasting.

Huffman Coding

Static Huffman encoding uses a fixed set of codes, based on a representative sample of data, for processing texts. Although encoding is achieved in a single pass, the data on which the compression is based may bear little resemblance to the actual text being compressed.

Dynamic Huffman encoding, on the other hand, reads each text twice; once to determine the frequency distribution of the characters in the text and once to encode the data. The codes used for compression are computed on the basis of the statistics gathered during the first pass with compressed texts being prefixed by a copy of the Huffman encoding table for use with the decoding process.

By using a single-pass technique, where each character is encoded on the basis of the preceding characters in a text, Gallager's adaptive Huffman encoding avoids many of the problems associated with either the static or dynamic method.

IDTV

A Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is two 64K bearer ("B") channels and a single delta ("D") channel. The B channels are used for voice or data, and the D channel is used for signaling and/or X.25 packet networking. This is the variety most likely to be found in residential service. Another flavor of ISDN is Primary Rate Interface (PRI). Inside the US, this consists of 24 channels, usually divided into 23 B channels and 1 D channel, and runs over the same physical interface as T1. Outside of the US then PRI has 31 user channels, usually divided into 30 B channels and 1 D channel. It is typically used for connections such as one between a PBX and a CO or IXC.

Letter-box

In a practical system such as a television camera, however, in order to minimize noise in the dark regions of the picture it is necessary to limit the slope (gain) of the curve near black. It is now standard to limit gain to 4.5 below a tristimulus value of +0.018, and to stretch the remainder of the curve to place the Y-intercept at -0.099 in order to maintain function and tangent continuity at the breakpoint:

The luma coefficients are also a function of the white point (or chromaticity of reference whitex). Computer users commonly have a white point with a colour temperature in the range of 9300 K, which contains twice as much blue as the daylight reference CIE D65 used in television. This is reflected in pictures and monitors that look too blue.

Although television primaries have changed over the years since the adoption of the NTSC standard in 1953, the coefficients of the luma equation for 525 and 625 line video have remained unchanged. For HDTV, the primaries are different and the luma coefficients have been standardized with somewhat different values.

Lempel-Ziv Welch (LZW) Compression

The model-based coder trades generality for extreme efficiency in its restricted domain. Better rendering and extending of the domain are research themes.

Modem (Modulator/demodulator)

Data to the computer is sometimes at a lower rate than data from the computer on the assumption that the user cannot type more than a few characters per second. Various data compression and error algorithms are required to support the highest speeds. Other optional features are auto-dial (auto-call) and auto-answer which allow the computer to initiate and accept calls without human intervention.

NAB

• To provide an architectural reference point for developing standardized procedures
• To allow inter-networking between networks of the same type
• To serve as a common framework for the development of services and protocols consistent with the OSI model
• To expedite the offering of interoperable, multi-vendor products and services

The physical and data link layers provide the same functions as their SNA counterparts (physical control and data link control layers). The network layer selects routing services, segments blocks and messages, and provides error detection, recovery, and notification.

The transport layer controls point-to-point information interchange, data packet size determination and transfer, and the connection/disconnection of session entities.

The session layer serves to organize and synchronize the application process dialog between presentation entities, manage the exchange of data (normal and expedited) during the session, and monitor the establishment/release of transport connections as requested by session entities.

The presentation layer is responsible for the meaningful display of information to application entities.

More specifically, the presentation layer identifies and negotiates the choice of communications transfer syntax and the subsequent data conversion or transformation as required. The application layer affords the interfacing of application processes to system interconnection facilities to assist with information exchange. The application layer is also responsible for the management of application processes including initialization, maintenance and termination of communications, allocation of costs and resources, prevention of deadlocks, and transmission security.

PAL (Phase Alternating Line)

The uncompressed bit rates for transmitting QCIF at 29.97 frames/sec is 9.115 Mbit/s.

Region Coding

Envision a decoder that can reproduce certain image primitives well. A typical set might consist of rectangular areas of constant color, smooth shaded patches and some textures. The image is analyzed into regions that can be expressed in terms of these primitives. The analysis is usually performed using a tree-structured decomposition where each part of the image is successively divided into smaller regions until a patch that meets either the bandwidth constraints or the quality desired can be fitted. Only the tree description and the parameters for each leaf need then be transmitted. Since the decoder is optimized for the reconstruction of these primitives, it is relatively simple to build.

To account for image data that does not encode easily using the available primitives, actual image data can also be encoded and transmitted, but this is not as efficient as fitting a patch.

This coder can also be combined with prediction (as it is in DVI), and the predicted difference image can then be region coded. A key element in the encoding operation is a region growing step where adjacent image patches that are distinct leaves of the tree are combined into a single patch. This approach has been considered highly asymmetric in that significantly more processing is required for encoding/analysis than for decoding. It is harder to grow a tree than to climb one.

While hardware implementations of the hybrid DCT coder have been built for extremely low bandwidth teleconferencing and for HDTV, there is no hardware for a region coder. However, such an assessment is deceptive since much of the processing used in DVI compression is in the motion predictor, a function common to both methods. In fact, all compression schemes are asymmetric, the difference is a matter of degree rather than one of essentials.

Repeater

The SNA model is concerned with both logical and physical units. Logical units (LUs) serve as points of access by which users can utilize the network. LUs can be viewed as terminals that provide users access to application programs and other services on the network. Physical units (PUs) like LUs are not defined within SNA architecture, but instead, are representations of the devices and communication links of the network.

Standard bodies

The International Organization for Standardization, ISO, in Geneva is the head organization of all these national standardization bodies. Together with the International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC, ISO concentrates its efforts on harmonizing national standards all over the world. The results of these activities are published as ISO standards. Among them are, for instance, the metric system of units, international stationery sizes, all kinds of bolt nuts, rules for technical drawings, electrical connectors, security regulations, computer protocols, file formats, bicycle components, ID cards, programming languages, International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), ... Over 10,000 ISO standards have been published so far and you surely get in contact with a lot of things each day that conform to ISO standards you never heard of. By the way, "ISO" is not an acronym for the organization in any language. It's a wordplay based on the English/French initials and the Greek-derived prefix "iso-" meaning "same".

Within ISO, ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) deals with information technology.

The International Telecommunication Union, ITU, is the United Nations specialized agency dealing with telecommunications. At present there are 164 member countries. One of its bodies is the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, CCITT. A Plenary Assembly of the CCITT, which takes place every few years, draws up a list of 'Questions' about possible improvements in international electronic communication. In Study Groups, experts from different countries develop 'Recommendations' which are published after they have been adopted. Especially relevant to computing are the V series of recommendations on modems (e.g. V.32, V.42), the X series on data networks and OSI (e.g. X.25, X.400), the I and Q series that define ISDN, the Z series that defines specification and programming languages (SDL, CHILL), the T series on text communication (teletext, fax, videotext, ODA) and the H series on digital sound and video encoding.

Since 1961, the European Computer Manufacturers Association, ECMA, has been a forum for data processing experts where agreements have been prepared and submitted for standardization to ISO, CCITT and other standards organizations.

Sub band coding

A pure sub-band coder performs a set of filtering operations on an image to divide it into spectral components. Usually, the result of the analysis phase is a set of sub-images, each of which represents some region in spatial or spatio-temporal frequency space. For example, in a still image, there might be a small sub-image that represents the low-frequency components of the input picture that is directly viewable as either a minified or blurred copy of the original. To this are added successively higher spectral bands that contain the edge information necessary to reproduce the original sharpness of the original at successively larger scales. As with DCT coder, to which it is related, much of the image energy is concentrated in the lowest frequency band.

For equal visual quality, each band need not be represented with the same signal-to-noise ratio; this is the basis for sub-band coder compression. In many coders, some bands are eliminated entirely, and others are often compressed with a vector or lattice quantizer. Succeedingly higher frequency bands are more coarsely quantized, analogous to the truncation of the high frequency coefficients of the DCT. A sub-band decomposition can be the intraframe coder in a predictive loop, thus minimizing the basic distinctions between DCT-based hybrid coders and their alternatives.

T1Q1.5

• Is it possible to measure motion artifacts with VTC/VT digital transport?
• If it can be done by objective measurements, can they be matched to subjective tests?
• Is it possible to correlate the objective measurements of analog and digital performance specification?

A trellis is a transition diagram, that takes time into account, for a finite state machine. Populating a trellis means specifying output symbols for each branch, specifying an initial state yields a set of allowable output sequences.

A trellis coder is defined as follows: given a trellis populated with symbols from an output alphabet and an input sequence x of length n, a trellis coder outputs the sequence of bits corresponding to the output sequence x that maximizes the SNR of the encoding.

X.25

For Rec. 601-1 coding in eight bits per component,

CCIR-601-1 Rec. calls for two-to-one horizontal subsampling of Cb and Cr, to achieve 2/3 the data rate of RGB with virtually no perceptible penalty. This is denoted 4:2:2. A few digital video systems have utilized horizontal subsampling by a factor of four, denoted 4:1:1. JPEG and MPEG normally subsample Cb and Cr two-to-one horizontally and also two-to-one vertically, to get 1/2 the data rate of RGB. No standard nomenclature has been adopted to describe vertical subsampling. To get good results using subsampling you should not just drop and replicate pixels, but implement proper decimation and interpolation filters.

YCbCr coding is employed by D-1 component digital video equipment.

YPbPr

YPbPr is part of the CCIR Rec. 709 HDTV standard, although different luma coefficients are used, and it is denoted E'Pb and E'Pr with subscript arrangement too complicated to be written here.

YPbPr is employed by component analog video equipment such as M-II and BetaCam; Pb and Pr bandwidth is half that of luma.

YIQ

Since an analog NTSC decoder has no way of knowing whether the encoder was encoding YUV or YIQ, it cannot detect whether the encoder was running at 0 degree or 33 degree phase. In analog usage the terms YUV and YIQ are often used somewhat interchangeably. YIQ was important in the early days of NTSC but most broadcasting equipment now encodes equiband U and V.

The D-2 composite digital DVTR (and the associated interface standard) conveys NTSC modulated on the YIQ axes in the 525-line version and PAL modulated on the YUV axes in the 625-line version.

YUV

It is conventional for an NTSC luma signal in a composite environment (NTSC or S-video) to have 7.5% setup :

The two signals Y (or Y_setup) and C can be conveyed separately across an S-video interface, or Y and C can be combined (encoded) into composite NTSC or PAL:

The following is a list of persons whose material contributed to the creation of this list :

comp.dsp.faq

jpeg.faq

standards.faq