Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Compression Formats for HD Recording and
Production
Joeri Barbarien, Marc Jacobs, and Adrian Munteanu
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Abstract.
As a result of the consumer's increasing demand for better quality and
higher resolutions, the transit to television broadcasting in HD, with a resolution of
at least 1280 x 720 pixels has recently started to take shape. In this respect, an im-
portant challenge is the selection of a suitable format for recording and production
of HD material. One of the issues is that high definition, unlike standard definition,
is quite an ambiguous term. In the first phase of HD television broadcasting de-
ployment, two different formats were put forward: 720p50/59.94/60 or
1080i25/29.97/30. In the first part of this chapter, the benefits and drawbacks of
both options will be discussed in detail. Besides the choice between 720p and
1080i, the selection of the video compression format and parameters for HD re-
cording and production is also an important consideration. In this chapter, two
state-of-the-art intra-only compression formats will be reviewed and compared:
Motion JPEG 2000 and H.264/AVC Intra. First, an in-depth description of both
video codecs will be provided. Thereafter, the compression schemes will be evalu-
ated in terms of rate-distortion performance, recompression loss and functionality.
1 Introduction
The quality and viewing experience delivered by standard definition (SD) televi-
sion have long been considered satisfactory by most consumers. Recently how-
ever, the demand for better quality and higher resolutions has dramatically
increased. One of the reasons for this is the significant price drop on LCD and
plasma televisions capable of displaying high quality, high resolution content. An-
other is the increasing availability of this type of content. This is the result of the
definitive breakthrough of Blu-ray as the format for storage of high-resolution
audiovisual material on an optical carrier, at the expense of HD-DVD, and of the
