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G8MNY > TECH 08.05.24 10:18l 272 Lines 13337 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: 625 Line PAL Spec v Digital
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From: G8MNY@GB7CIP.#32.GBR.EURO
To : TECH@WW
By G8MNY (Updated Dec 07)
(8 Bit ASCII graphics use code page 437 or 850, Terminal Font)
With broadcast TV all now Digital, I thought some Analogue facts might be
interesting relating to the old System I. (UK)
VSB PAL (UK)
The Rx IF is what makes the narrower SSB channel width possible, it is setup on
a balanced DSB AM signal such that the carrier is at -6dB on the LSB gentle
filter slope. The missing USB this causes, exactly equals the gained LSB
fraction to produce a flat phase response DC - 5.25MHz so important for a
really good TV picture.
0dBÄ´ Gentle | ,-----------------------. .---.
-3dBij Slope No ³ ,/' | | \
-6dBÄ´ Group ³/' Rx LUM RESPONSE V \ FM
³ Delay ,/'³ (Y) Chromance \ Sound
³ ,/' ³ Notch \ ³
-20dBÄ´ ,/' LSB ³ USB \³ /~\Nicam
ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÁÄÄÄÁÂ
-2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 MHz
The recommended -6dB 400kHz wide Colour notch, used to be applied in the video
stage to reduce fine chrominance patterning in strong colours, enabling the
otherwise full luminance bandwidth to be used. Because there is some delay in
extracting & processing the PAL colour signal a luminance delay line is needed.
But in modern Rx design (cheaper) they use a video wall filter IC (bucket delay
line) to do both the time delay & colour removal, but at a cost of the LOSS OF
ALL luminance information above 4MHz! Unless you have a more expensive comb
video filter TV design.
0dBÄ´--------------------------. Analogue
-3dBij | 22% of | Razor >
-6dBÄ´ Modern TV | fine | Sharp >
³ Luminance (Y) | detail | Teletext>
³ | lost ! | Display >
ÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄ>LUM BANDWIDTH
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 MHz
VHS SVHS
ASTRA DVD @ HQ
So the reduced 4MHz standard has been used for most digital system as the upper
limit needed, except when 16:9 is selected.
DETAIL
625 Line 4:3 picture due to frame syncs, & blanking/teletext has 575 lines of
picture area vertical detail or 575 vertical pixels.
The 64uS lines less syncs, colour burst & porch time, have 52uS of picture area
detail that is not pixelize but limited by bandwidth of 5.2MHz. That is 270
black/white cycles of information per line or 540 baud at any phase.
Broadcasters insist on > 720 pixels per line for cameras & any digital stores
to reduce the horizontal pixelization artifacts being too visible. (e.g. a
distant boat mast being 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2, pixels wide as a camera pans.)
For 4:3 picture you need to handle 575 x 720 pixels 25 frames per second, or
better still 287.5 x 720 pixels 50 fields per second for fast action.
So for a 16:9 picture you SHOULD need 575 x 959 pixels! 1/3 more info per line,
or an Analogue video bandwidth of 6.9MHz, hence the E-PAL system where detail
above 4MHz was to be put above 6MHz, but that was before NICAM.
TX PAL (UK)
At the Tx, NO LSB filtering is done until -1.3MHz.
0dBÄ´ _.-------------------------------..
-3dBij ,/~ ³ Luminance . - ' ~ `.
³ ,/' ³ (Y) / (UV) | FM
³ ,/' ³ / Chromance | ³Sound
³ ,/' Lower Tx ³ / LSB | USB | ³
-20dBÄ´,/' Sideband ³ / | | ³ /~\Nicam
ÀÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÁÄÄÄÁÂ
-3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7
As you can see the luminance (Y) bandwidth 5.25MHz @ -3dB which at 52uS per
visible line gives a 500 lines of infinate precision analogue horizontal
definition. e.g. A vertical line edge (pixel) can in any position.
CHROMANCE (Colour)
The colour is not simple as the eye can't see colour detail well. (try Purple
Blue background lettering with similar light level on a PC). So the TV systems
all modified their B/W system to sprinkle some low definition colour on it.
This is typically at 1/3 the bandwidth horizontally (1.4MHz) & 1/4 the
bandwidth vertically, averaged out in the Rx over 2 lines in the same field.
(e.g. even line 100 & 102 & odd line 101 & 103). (this much worse in VHS).
The chromance signal has been more cleverly fitted in using a quadrature
carrier system to carry both blue & red difference signals (U & V), like the
USA NTSC system the subcarrier frequency used makes the colour sidebands
exactly interleave between the luminance sidebands.
N.T.S.C. SYSTEM P.A.L. SYSTEM
< 15.750kHz ><7.8kHz> < 15.625kHz > <7.8kHz>
Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum
³ Col ³ Col ³ ³ Col Col ³ Col Col ³
³ | ³ | ³ ³ | | ³ | | ³
ÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁ ÄÁÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÁÄ
Overlapping spectrum <7.8KHz>
But the PAL alternate line inversion (7.8kHz) of the (V) colour vector, ensures
there is NO phase error (colour hue) seen in the signal. Like NTSC there is
also minimum, but some interference to the luminance especially on fine
diagonal patterns when the sidebands will clash.
FRAMES
Colour
Burst_________________ _______________________
Line Û ° Frame 1 Sync ³1 Line Û ° Frame 2 Sync ³2 ^
Syncs Û ° Analoge Teletext ³ Syncs Û ° Analoge Teletext ³ |
Û °ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿³49 Û °ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿³50 |
Û °³ ³³ Û °³ ³³ |
Û °³ Odd Lines ³³ Û °³ Even Lines ³³ |
Û °³ in field 1 ³³ Û °³ in field 2 ³³ 20mS
Û °³ (575/2 lines) ³³ Û °³ are interlaced ³³ |
Û °³ ³³ Û °³ between field ³³ |
Û °³ ³³ Û °³ 1 lines. ³³ |
Û °³ ³³ Û °³ ³³ |
Û °ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ³625 Û °ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ³624 v
< - - 52uS - - - >
< - - - - 64uS - - - ->
The 625 line interlaced system actually Line
has only 575 lines of picture. 50 lines is EQ ------__------
take up with the frame Equalising pulse, FP ______________
frame pulse, teletext & or blanking lines. EQ ------__------
TT xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The 2 fields the are independent in time & TT **************
effectively give smooth motion at 50 frames Blank ==============
per second of 287.5 lines. However films 51 -------------- ODD Field
are @ 24 or 25 frames per sec & the motion 52 ============== EVEN Field
is worse, so also is some digital systems 53 --------------
(e.g. frame store mixers) that only do 54 ==============
picture calculations on a full frame of 55 --------------
575 lines, thus loosing time difference 56 ==============
information needed for good smooth motion.
624 ------- Half line
625 ==============
SPEED
The 4:3 Analogue system is capable of 50 (1 field) pictures per second giving
really good smooth motion, twice that of 25/24 f.p.s. film.
As far as I know the broadcast MPEG we see only works at processing 25 f.p.s.
(2 fields at once) & due to commercial bandwidth restrictions is not capable of
sending 25 I frames/S needed for full field motion so is not the same as film.
PIXELIZATION
The 575 lines does pixelize the vertical content of the analogue picture. Until
the advent of digital processing the horizontal has not.
ÞÛÝ vertical pixels ÛÛ Horizontal ANALOGUE
³ ³ ÞÛÝ PIXELS can be in ANY
ÞÛÝ ÛÛ position, making up for
³_³ ÞÛÝ lower horizontal resolution.
For 4:3 aspect ratio the number of horizontal pixels expected bye the eye to
match 575 vertical ones is (4/3) x 575 = 766. This equates to a video bandwidth
of approx 8MHz. But only 5.25MHz is used, the difference is due to the
advantage of the above as seen by the eye, where the position rather then the
size if the pixel is more important.
For 16:9 therefore using just digital matrix of pixels, a 575 line picture will
need (16/9) x 575 = 1022 pixels per line. If you just stretch the picture & do
not add more pixels you end up with wider pixels that looks like a smudgy
picture! ÛÛÛ
PICTURE LEVELS
The analogue signal is in theory capable of an infinite number of steps. In
practice the broadcasters work to a S/N ratio (weighted).
Lum Colour Where
48dB 42dB Studio
56dB 52dB Link Network
52dB 52dB Main Tx
51dB 51dB Off air Repeater
48dB 48dB A transposer
45dB 41dB Total Tx noise
40dB 35dB New VHS tape best quality
With modern 280MB/S digital links to Tx sites S/N ratio of 70dB are the norm.
DOING THE DIGITAL SUMS
If we now take a look at what is needed to digital to do the equivalent to
analogue but 16:9, then just taking the Luminance part...
Pixels per second = 575 x 1022 x 25 = 14.7MP/S
If each pixel is only sampled to 256, 8 bit quantisation level that at best can
yield 46dB S/N. Then the data rate needs be 14.7 x 8 = 117 MB/S.
Now doing a simple 3x for colour you get, 357 MB/S, but adding in just 50% more
for the colour (assuming it is processed as for PAL) & a bit for the stereo
sound, you get a more sensible 180MB/S.
TX FEEDS
Most TV source are digital, but digital link feeds to Main Analogue + digital
Tx sites are very wide bandwidth for widescreen, speed up to 280MB/S per
channel are used to ensure the quality with NO DIGITAL ARTIFACTS.
The difference between these digital feeds & what is actually broadcast
digitally in the UK is enormous.
COMPRESSION
Now if you use very efficient but corrupting digital compression (not like
zipping where no data is lost) such as MEG2, you can have 100:1 compression
with only a few noticeable artifacts that hardly show up, unless there is lots
of motion or detail in the picture. But of course there is processing delay
penalty of about 0.75s for it, as it needs to have lots of frames in hand to do
the best data compression comparisons with.
MPEG
You now see what is need from a Digital system to get up to the old Analogue
standard. Well they did not do that, they limited the pixels per line to a max
of 400 on 4:3 picture.
The no of "I" frames (new frames) is severely limited by MUX bandwidth
allocated per ch, so most of the frames are made up from updated of modified
previous frames. If many chanels on a MUX need "I" frames then some will have
to wait, this is the reason for freezing the picture with no errors
occasionally when a camera shot change is due.
Things that MPEG does well..
1/ Compress a full spec pictures down to about 4MB/S for a reasonable picture.
2/ Vertical movement of whole picture.
3/ Sideways movement of whole picture.
4/ Fade to Black.
5/ Change contrast.
6/ Colour registration, etc.
Things that MPEG can't do well, if at all..
A/ Zoom in of whole picture.
B/ Fast movement of any detail in part of the picture. (e.g. flames)
C/ Rotation of whole picture, e.g. a shaky camera/helicam.
D/ Cross fade to new camera shot.
E/ Provide > 256 video levels ( = 47dB S/N weighted).
ENERGY
Remember every Set Top Box is about 20W watts more (10w if in a TV), Also 10W
standby mode is needed, as it must be left on 24/7 to catch early hours system
& software updates.
So DTV is not very green!
CONCLUSION
Using digital TV for still pictures, the definition with no PAL colour filter
using RGB Scart option, looks as good as the old analogue used to be on most
TVs (but not ones with Comb/6dB filters), but with no added noise, no ghosts,
no ringy edges.
But Motion can be a lot worse if the data rate is too low, than the old
Analogue, especially detailed pictures. In fact you can just see this affect on
the digital fed Tx on analogue TVs, where very fine detail on a busy picture
appears only a few frames later!
Despite all the hype on improved digital pictures etc, errors/noise spikes in
digital signal are very badly handled. Causing the heavily compressed picture
to break into large still pixels or freeze with the break up of the sound into
loud squeaks.
There is a very real hidden cost of course for going digital, at least 20W per
Rx/Set Top Box etc. which is not GREEN. Even though modern kit is generally
more power efficient this is in addition to that.
One last point, all Computer kit crashes, STB are no exception, & power offs to
reset the box after a mains brown out are normal!
Why Don't U send an interesting bul?
73 De John, G8MNY @ GB7CIP
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