Winter 2020

DMET501 – Introduction to Media Engineering

Video and Animation (1)

Seif Eldawlatly

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Video
• Video has become an important feature of the Internet after the
development of digital video (DV) technology and higher network
speeds

• A digital camcorder records video on a tape using one of the following

formats: mini-DV, DVCAM or DVCPRO, and connect to the computer by
a FireWire Interface

• Some camcorders have an internal hard disk, while others write directly
to DVDs

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Video Standards
• DV camcorders or VTRs connected to computers over FireWire are
used for reasonable quality digital video capture

• Cheap video cameras are often built into mobile phones and laptop
computers or used as Webcams. They usually use MPEG-4 and USB
2.0

• Digital video standards inherit features from analogue broadcast TV:

1. National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) standard
Used in the US, Japan, South America

2. Phase Alternating Line (PAL) standard

Used in Western Europe, Middle East, China

3. Sequential Couleur avec Memoire (SECAM) standard

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Used in France, Eastern Europe and Russia
Video Standards

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Video Standards
• Television sets were traditionally based on Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs)

• Raster scanning principle: The screen is divided into horizontal lines.

Electron beams sweep across the screen tracing each line and moving
down to trace the next

• The picture we see is built up from top to bottom as a sequence of

horizontal lines

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• The screen has to be refreshed 40 times/sec to avoid flickering
Video Standards
• Transmitting an entire picture many times a second requires large
bandwidth

• Therefore, each frame is divided into two fields (odd and even lines),
transmitted one after the other and interlaced for display

• Persistence of vision will help not noticing that at any moment, only half
the image is displayed

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Video Standards
• Interlaced frames may display combing when displayed progressively
or exported as still images
Odd Field Even Field Combined

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Video Standards
• Originally, the rate at which frames were transmitted was chosen to
match the local AC line frequency: a field rate of 50 per second in
Western Europe and 60 per second in North America

• A field rate of 50 per second corresponds to 25 frames/sec (because of

interlacing)

• PAL: a frame has 625 lines, of which 576 are picture, displayed at 50
fields (25 frames) per second (625/50)

• NTSC: a frame has 525 lines, of which 480 are picture, displayed at
59.94 fields (29.97 frames) per second (525/59.94, often treated as
525/60)

• When video is played back on a computer monitor, it is not interlaced.

Lines of each frame are written from top to bottom (progressive 8
scanning)
Digital Video Standards
• Since digital video will be displayed on the same screens used for
traditional video, back compatibility is required

• The standard often used to sample video to convert it to digital form is

the CCIR 601 standard

• A video frame has to be sampled in both directions:

- In vertical direction, 576 lines for PAL and 480 lines for NTSC
- CCIR 601 uses 720 lines for horizontal sampling regardless of the
scanning standard

• Therefore, PAL frames are 720 × 576 and NTSC are 720 × 480

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Digital Video Standards
• CCIR 601 uses the YCBCR color space where Y corresponds to
luminance, CB is Blue – Y and CR is Red – Y

• It is used with 4:2:2 chrominance sub-sampling

• Since the human eye is less sensitive to variations in color than to

variations in brightness, fewer color samples are needed compared to
luminance samples 10
Digital Video Standards
• DV applies 4:1:1 chrominance sub-sampling and compresses to a
constant data rate of 25 Mbits per second, a compression ratio of 5:1

• High quality DVPRO and Digital-S formats use the 4:2:2 sampling

• MPEG defines a series of standards. MPEG-2 is used on DVDs;

MPEG-4 supports a range of multimedia data at bit rates from 10 kbps
to 300 Mbps or greater

• MPEG-4 defines a file format. 3GP is a simpler version, used in mobile

phones

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Digital Video Standards
• High Definition (HD) represents any format that has larger frames than
the standard formats

• HD video uses higher resolutions and may be progressively scanned.

Frames with heights of 720 and 1080 pixels and an aspect ratio of 16:9
are used

• HD frames are either progressively scanned or interlaced. If progressive

scanning is used, the letter “p” is written after the frame rate. If
interlacing is used, the letter “i“ is written

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Digital Video Standards
• Example: HD of 1080 60i indicates a frame of size 1920 x 1080
interlaced at 60 fields per second

• Comparison of different formats

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Editing and Post-Production
• Video editing is the process of constructing a complete movie from a set
of video clips or scenes, combining them with sound where required

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Editing and Post-Production
• Post-production is concerned with making changes or compositing the
material, using operations that are similar to bitmapped image
manipulations

• Traditional films used to be edited by physically cutting frames from the

film and splice them together to compose a scene

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Editing and Post-Production
• Effects such as dissolves and wipes are more complicated to do in
traditional films. They required the use of a device called an optical
printer

• Such device uses two projectors, each projecting the films that are to be
dissolved onto a camera. Filters are used for each projector to control
the dissolve effect

• Traditional analog video editing was done using more than one tape
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Editing and Post-Production
• Digital video editing made editing much easier similar to how typing in a
word processor on a computer is compared to using a typewriter

• During editing, clips are imported, trimmed and assembled on a

timeline. Transitions, such as dissolves, may be added between
overlapping clips

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Editing and Post-Production
• Edited digital video can be played back as soon as it’s edited not like
how it used to be with traditional films

• In post-production, the values of effects’ parameters may vary over time

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Video Delivery
• Video may be delivered over a network as a downloaded file, it may be
streamed or it may be delivered by progressive download

• Embedded video: The video is transferred from a server to the user’s

machine and not played back until the entire file has arrived

• Progressive download (HTTP streaming): The file starts playing as

soon as enough of it has arrived

• In true streaming, the video is never stored on the user’s disk, but it
does require sufficient bandwidth to deliver frames fast enough to be
played (live video)

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Video Delivery
• Example (Progressive Download):
Consider a 30-second movie that has
been compressed to a data rate of
2Mbps (Every second of the movie is
saved in 2Mb)
If the movie is to be sent over a
connection operating at 512 kbps, the
movie will take 30 sec x
2Mbps/512kbps = 120 seconds to
download

After 90 seconds, three-quarters of the

frames will have been received. So, if
the movie starts playing at that point, by
the time the 30 seconds are done, the
rest of the movie would arrive
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Multimedia Architecture
• A multimedia architecture provides:
- An API (Application programming interface) for capture, playback and
compression
- A container format for storing media data
- A streaming server
- Software tools, such as a player

• QuickTime and DirectShow are the multimedia architectures included

with Mac OS X and Windows, respectively. Their file formats are MOV
and WMV

• Flash Video is widely used for Web video. FLV files must be played in
the Flash Player with a SWF that controls the video playback (or in a
third-party player)

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