Video Technology Magazine September 2003

Ultra High Definition Video (UHDV)

  UHDV displays images with 4,000 horizontal scanning lines, compared to the 1,000 offered by the current state-of-the-art high definition television (HDTV) technology and just 625 for standard TV broadcasts. When horizontal and vertical scanning are both taken into account a UHDV picture contains 16 times the number of pixels of HDTV.
UHDV article here

First HDTV Camcorder

The JVC GR-HD1 records digital high-definition images (750/30p)1280x720p viewable to mini DV tapes using MPEG 2 compression. Not quite 1080i, it's a single CCD sensor but well worth the $1900 price tag.

The JVC JY-HD10U is even more capable supporting 1080i playback but still can only record 720p, 1.18 Mega-pixel progressive scan CCD (Single chip) and retails for around $2300.
I can't believe these don't have a 3 CCD version available.
JVC press release here
Review here

Dueling video codecs square off at broadcast conference

  The battle between H.264 and Windows Media 9 escalated during the International Broadcast Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, with Microsoft Corp.'s sudden declaration that it will make its proprietary Windows Media 9 video codec a movie and TV standard. — God I hope not! I can just imagine trying to clean virus's from grandma's TV.

Via Licensing Corp. announced Sept. 12th the availability of preliminary financial licensing terms for patents essential for H.264 implementation. The industry had been waiting for such a sign, indicating that H.264 IP rights issues might finally be resolved. However, Via Licensing fell short of disclosing individual companies participating in its patent pool. — From What I can tell H.264 and MPEG4 and H.263 are all the same standard with only a few improvements between them. I'm sure even the MS Media9 is also very similar.

Read more at EETimes.com

If any of you remember the Fiasco with the MPEG4 licensing from MPEG LA They now charge $0.25 US per encoder or decoder, but wanted a per minute fee for transmitted video, Just imagine what a CCTV system in a 7/11 shop would cost to operate if it compressed in MPEG4. It's not just the 1 Cent per 30 Minutes fee per camera ( 0.01*2cost per Hr * 24Hr * 16cameras * 30day month ) = $230.40 , but the cost and difficulty of tracking usage and billing customers for this.. — MPEG LA Press ReleaseMore grumbling on the subject at Project Mayo

I guess this hits the opensource community the hardest since any license fee will make open code not freely distributable!, also preventing free software from playing standard video streams. It doesn't sound so standard to me.


Writers Wanted

Currently we are seeking people to contribute articles related to Digital Video, MPEG2, MPEG4, DVC, DVD, Streaming , Video Conferencing and related topics.
Free Advertising is also welcome.

    More info contact the Editor:
            SOKOL@VIDEOTECHNOLOGY.COM

Extending 2.4 GHz wireless video links

  At one point of another most of you were probably assaulted with one of these pop under adds for
X10 Wireless Cameras. Many people thought the X10 cameras transmitted digitally or streamed over the Internet, but they were just short range video transmitters. Now this is still a great thing, since I had tried to work with earlier transmitters over UHF and had terrible result and cost a fortune.

Fortunately these cameras are starting to show up everywhere, the spy shops carry them, even Fry's electronics and Radio Shack have gotten into the game, selling security systems and an RC rear view video system.

I have found the price to vary from $50 for a transmitter and receiver to over $300, although I don't see any advantage to paying more.
From first hand experience I have found all of these systems to be compatible with each other and are all using the same chip sets that make it cheap and possible.
These transmitter can transmit one of four frequencies: Ch1 = 2.413 GHz, Ch2 = 2.432 GHz, CH3 = 2.451 GHz, CH4 = 2.470 GHz.

These 2.4GHz microwave wireless video links use FM modulation for the video. Normal VHF & UHF terrestrial analog broadcast television (ie normal TV) is AM modulated video. Both systems TV and 2.4 GHz use FM modulation for the audio.

The range on these systems tends to be fairly short but I recently came across some amateur rocketry experimenters who have extended the range using home made directional antennas constructed of PVC tubing and wire.
Antenna Construction
Photos of a home made antenna
Rocket system with on board transmitter

Previous Articles      Current Articles


Economics of Video and the Internet

This is a comprehensive discussion about the money side of the Internet video business. Read Article here

HDTV Forum - November 11-13 in Marina Del Ray

Insight Media and DisplaySearch has teamed up to produce a new conference called HDTV Forum 2003: Enabling HDTV from the Factory to the Home. It has been organized specifically to gather TV industry leaders to discuss the strategies and hurdles for HDTV acceptance and implementation.
Read Article here
Read PDF Brochure

Cell Phones get 3D graphics Capabilities

  In March DoCoMo started demo-ing a phone with 3D graphics and working toward standard 3D api's. Story here. This is one I just can't figure out since I can hardly get a decent phone call but the graphic will look great. I guess they decided to tackle a simple problem to distract from the real problem of poor error correction and compression, as well as really dumb network protocols that don't know enough to reestablish a dropped call.

Cellphone 3G Wireless + H.324 = 3G-324M

  I ran across and excellent article that goes into how 3G and H.324 video standards come together for video over cellphones. H.324 is the protocol to set up and tear down video conferencing sessions over phone lines. It supports H.263 and H.264(MPEG-4 Simple profile) video streams.
See the article here ->Understanding the 3G-324M Spec

OpenSource Video Deinterlacing

  I came across 3 opensource projects on SourceForge that perform video de-interlacing. For those that don't know, interlacing is what RS-170 NTSC video does to make the resolution appear higher by send the frames all even scan lines then all odd. This is a real problem when trying to grab a still image from video, when playing video on a non-interlaced display and when trying to compress video. An NTSC video frame is 640x480 pixels, where all odd lines are 1/60 of a second behind the even lines. This causes the edges of anything moving horizontally to have a ragged edge like the teeth of a comb. This does not compress well. Alternately you could have 2 x 1/2 frames but then you wouldn't be able to perform intraframe comparisons between consecutive frames but have to do them for the even frames then odd. Converting from Interlaced to non-interlaced (like most VGA's) also called progressive scan (in HDTV lingo) eliminates these problems. Such de-interlace filters could also increase the S/N ratio providing much clearer and more stable images.

Project Name Description
DScaler Deinterlacer/Scaler An application that does scaling/deinterlacing/inverse telecine using a high powered PC and a bt8x8 TV capture card. Essentially, this software converts a PC into a good-quality line doubler/scaler/upconverter machine! 
tvtime tvtime is a realtime video deinterlacer. It displays video at full 59.94fps for NTSC or 50fps for PAL for high visual quality and smoothness of motion. 
XAWTV Deinterlacing plug-in for XAWTV/motv. 

Deinterlacing Papers

Below are some papers on the underlying theory behind deinterlacing.

Video Related Domains for Sale

H261.com Named after ISO H.261 the video conferencing standard
H263L.com ISO H.263 This is the standard behind MPEG-4 essentially.
Currently I have a little informations site there

These next three are named After the Philips TriMedia VLIW video processor
trimediavideo.com
pnx1300.com The new Nexperia Part number
tm1300.com The chip part number

The TriMedia is an excellent CPU with amazing performance for more info Click Here.   I am also experience with developing for it.

    More info contact the owner:
            SOKOL@DNULL.COM


LiveCam Video Streaming Source Code Now Available

  Source Code and technology from the original LiveCam streaming video server is now available. LiveCam is the original streaming webcam, sending live video over the Internet. The code has been updated to support FreeBSD 4.8 and 5.1 as well as improving the latency and framerate and supporting several current motherboards. Find out more at - www.livecamserver.com


Error correction Technology over the Internet

Error Correction Internet Protocols (ECIP) is a new transmission protocol for sending video across the Internet. The Inventor is now going to be making it an opensource project. He is seeking collaborators for this project.

    More information is available at - www.ECIP.org





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