Introduce Raster Image : Digital Video and HD

Published by:

In modern times, digital image and digital video are more important and more active. We use on many device movie theaters, camera on mobile phone, digital TV, DVD, VCD, Computer, digital printer and other. A digital image is represented by a rectangular array (matrix) of picture elements (pixels). Pixel arrays of several image standards are shown, with their counts of image columns and rows. In a grayscale system each pixel comprises a single component whose value is related to what is loosely called brightness. In a color system each pixel comprises several components (usually three) whose values are closely related to human color perception.

Historically, a video image was acquired at the camera, conveyed through the channel, and displayed using analog scanning, there was no explicit pixel array. Modern cameras and modern displays directly represent the discrete elements of an image array having fixed structure. Signal processing at the camera, in the pipe-line, or at the display may perform spatial and/or temporal resampling to different formats.

The pixel array is for one image is a frame. In video, digital memory used to store one image is called a framestore, in computing, it’s a framebuffer. The total pixel count in an image is the number of image columns NC (or in video, samples per active line, SAL) times the number of image rows NR (or active lines, LA) The total pixel count is usually expressed in megapixels (Mpx).

In video and in computing, a pixel comprises the set of all components necessary to represent color (typically red, green and blue). In the mosaic sensors typical of digital still cameras (DSCs) a pixel is an color component individually, the process of demosaicking interpolates the missing components to create a fully populated image array. In digital cinema cameras the DSC interpretation of pixel is used, however, in a digital cinema projector, a pixel is a triad.

The value of each pixel component represents brightness and color in a small region surrounding the corresponding point in the sampling lattice.

Pixel component values are quantized, typically to an integer value that occupies between 1 and 16 bits and often 8 or 10 bits – of digital storage. The number of bits per component, or per pixel, is call the bit depth. (We use bit depth instead of width to avoid confusion, the term width refers to the entire picture)

Aspect Ratio : Digital Video and HD

Published by:

Aspect ratio for image or video, is the ratio of an image’s width to its height. Standard aspect ratios for film and video are sketched. Aspect ratio is sometimes called display aspect ratio (DAR) or picture aspect ratio (PAR). Standard-definition (SD) television has an aspect ratio of 4:3

DAR <== Digital Aspect Ratio
PAR <== Picture Aspect Ratio
SD <== Standard-Definition
HD <== High Deffinition

Cinema film commonly uses 1.85:1 (which for historical reasons is called either flat or spherical), or 2.4:1 (“CinemaScope.” or colloquially, scope). Many films are 1.85:1, but “blockbusters” are usually 2.4:1. Film at 2.4:1 aspect ratio was historically acquired using an aspherical lens that squeezes the horizontal dimension of the image by a factor of two. The projector is equipped with a similar lens, to restore the horizontal dimension of the projected image. The lens and the technique are called anamorphic. In principle, an anamorphic lens can have any ratio, in practice; a ratio of exactly two is ubiquitous in cinema.

Widescreen refers to an aspect ratio wider than 4:3 High-definition (HD) television is standardized with an aspect ratio of 16:9 widescreen variant of a base video standard, where the horizontal dimension of the 16:9 image occupies the same width as the 4:3 aspect ratio standard. Consumer electronic equipment rarely recovers the correct aspect ratio of such conversions.

Standard Definition 4 : 3 12 : 9
High Definition 16 : 9 16 : 9
Cinema File 1.85 : 1 16.65 : 9
Blockbusters 1.85 : 1 21.6 : 9

(If the same high, Blockbusters has the longest width)

HD is standardized with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (about 1.78:1), fairly close to the 1.85:1 ordinary movie aspect ratio Figure 1.3 below illustrates the origin of the 16:9 aspect ratio. Through a numerological coincidence apparently first revealed by Kerns Powers, the Geometric mean of 4:3 (the standard aspect ratio of conventional television) and 2.4 (the aspect ratio of a CinemaScope movie) is very close within a fraction of a percent to 16:9 (The calculation is shown in the lower right corner of the figure.) A choice of 16:9 for HD meant that SD, HD, and CinemaScope shared the same “image circle”: 16:9 was a compromise between the vertical cropping required for SD and the horizontal cropping required for CinemaScope.


Geometry and Image capture : Digital Video and HD

Published by:

Geometry : Digital Vido and HD

In mathematics, coordinate values of the (two-dimensional) plane range both positive and negative. The plane is thereby divided into four quadrants (see Figure 1.4). Quadrants are denoted by Roman numerals in the counterclockwise direction. In the continuous image plane, locations are described using Cartesian coordinates [x, y] – the first coordinate is associated with the horizontal direction, thee second with the vertical. When both x and y are positive, the location is in the first quadrant (quadrant I). In image science, the image lies in this quadrant. (Adobe’s Postscript system uses first-quadrant coordinates.)

In matrix indexing, axis ordering is reversed from Cartesian coordinates: A matrix is indexed by row then column. The top row of a matrix has the smallest index, so matrix indices lie in quadrant IV. In mathematics, matrix elements are ordinarily identified using 1-origin 1-origin indexing – in particular, MATLAB and Mathematica, both of which have deep roots in mathematics. The scan line order of conventional video and image processing usually adheres to the matrix convention, but with zero-origin indexing: Rows and columns are usually numbered [r,c] from [0,0] at the top left. In other words, the image is in quadrant IV (but eliding the negative sign on the y-coordinate), but ordinarily using zero-origin indexing.

Digital image sampling structures are denoted width x height. For example, a 1920 x 1080 system has columns numbered 0 through 1919 and rows (historically, “picture lines”) numbered 0 through 1079.


Image capture : Digital Video and HD

In human vision, the three-dimensional world is imaged by the lens of the eye onto the retina, which is populated with photoreceptor cells that respond to light having wavelengths ranging from about 400 nm to 700 nm. In video and in film, we build a camera having a lens and a photosensitive device, to mimic how the world is perceived by vision. Although the shape of the retina is roughly a section of a sphere, it is topologically two dimensional. In a camera, for practical reasons, we employ a flat image plane, sketched in Figure 1.5 above, instead of a section of a sphere. Inage science involves analyzing the continuous distribution of optical power that is incident on the image plane.