Analog Video

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If I can't picture it, I can't understand it."

-- Albert Einstein

Vision
Let's think about human vision for a moment. The eye receives an image, and
hundreds of thousands of fibres in the optic nerve simultaneously send to the brain
signals that, taken together, represent the whole scene. Human vision uses an
abundance of "channels," all at once.
In television however, the entire scene must be sent through a single channel
Think of it as a serial process, sent down a series circuit. Within the camera an
electrical signal is formed to represent the changing brightness and colour of each
part. This signal is sent to the monitor. At the monitor the signal is transformed back
into light, and the image is assembled on the viewing screen in its proper relative
position.

In the television system, the picture we

want to see is "scanned" sequentially,
top to bottom, left to right. This
repetition occurs at a rate of
approximately 30 times every second, so
we say that television runs at a rate of 30
frames per second.
Even though the picture elements are laid
down on the screen one after the other,
they all must be perceived at once. This
requirement is met by persistence of
vision - a property of the eye. When light
entering the eye is shut off, the
impression of light persists for about a
tenth of a second. So, if all the picture
The perception of motion comes to us by a series of still images
elements in the image are presented
Muybridges famous galloping horse experiment of the late 1800s
successively to the eye in a tenth of a
second or less, the whole area of the
screen appears illuminated, although in
fact only one spot of light is present at any
instant. Activity in the scene is
represented, as in motion pictures, by a
series of still pictures, each differing
slightly from those preceding and

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following it.

Black and White Television

Electrons
Before we go on further in our discussion of video, let's take a moment to have a look at
electrons, since they are the basis of this whole television business anyway, and a quick
overview will be invaluable in our discussion of monitors and TV sets later on.
The electron is often described as a "particle of electricity." The characteristic that we care
about for now is that an electron has an electric charge. By the way, an electric current down a
wire is a flow of electrons, too.
Electrons were discovered in 1895 by Joseph J. Thomson, a British physicist, in the form of
cathode rays - actually a stream of electron particles. What's really interesting about
cathode rays is that they can be deflected by magnetic and electric fields. An electron is
essentially weightless - it has a mass of about 9.1083 X 10-28 grams.
Let's now try to do something useful with this stream of electrons. If we move them in a
particular pattern across our picture tube, we get:

Scanning
The process of breaking down the scene into
picture elements and reassembling them on
the screen is known as scanning. It's like your
eye's motion when you read this page. In
scanning, the scene is broken into a series
of horizontal lines.
The principle of scanning (note how each line breaks down the scene into
discrete elements of picture intensity)

At The Camera
The camera "reads" the topmost line from left
to right, producing a series of electrical
signals that corresponds to the lights and
shadows along that line. It then passes back
to the left end of the next line below and
follows it in the same way. In this fashion the
camera reads the whole area of the scene,
line by line, until the bottom of the picture is
reached. Then the camera scans the next
image, repeating the process continuously.
The television camera has now produced a
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rapid sequence of electrical impulses; they
correspond to the order of picture elements
scanned in every line of every image.

A voltage created as the camera scans across one line of the Parthenon shot

At The Monitor
At the television monitor this signal is recovered and controls the picture tube. The picture tube
creates an image that is composed of horizontal lines just like those produced in the camera.
As the camera examines the topmost line, a spot of light produced by the picture tube moves
across the screen and produces the topmost line of light on the screen. The video signal
causes the spot of light to become brighter or darker as it moves, and so the picture elements
scanned by the camera are reproduced line by line at the monitor, until the whole area of the
screen is covered, completing the image. Then the process is repeated.

Try This At Home!

Go to your friend's place. The one who didn't get the loan of the colour TV when they moved to
Toronto, so they have the clunker black and white set instead. Take a magnifying glass with
you.
Turn on the set, tune in a channel, and hold the magnifying glass up to the screen. Notice the
scanning lines that make up the picture. If you're friend asks what you're doing, tell 'em you're
practising your Sherlock Holmes impression.
By the way, this doesn't really work on a colour TV, but there's a nifty thing we can look for,
that we'll mention later on.

Interlace

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Interlaced Together...
Field One

Field Two

Because the phosphor coating on the picture tube can only keep the picture information for a
certain amount of time, flicker results if scanning from top to bottom only occurs at 30 frames
per second. To avoid flicker, each still picture is presented twice by a process known as
interlaced scanning. After the topmost line is scanned, space for another line is left
immediately below it, and the next scanned line appears just below the empty space. As the
scanning proceeds, alternate lines are scanned, with empty spaces between them. This
represents the first showing of the still picture. The next image also consists of spaced lines,
and its lines fall precisely in the empty spaces of the preceding image, so the whole screen is
filled by the two sets of interlaced scanning lines. These two sets of scanning lines are called
fields. There are two fields to each frame of television scanning.

The Sawtooth Wave

Consider for a moment the actual trace of the electron beam in either a
camera or a picture tube. It goes evenly from left to right, then snaps
back quickly to the left. The process repeats itself over and over. To
make the beam do this, we apply a scanning voltage to coils of wire
around the neck of the tube that act as electromagnets moving the beam
around. The scanning voltage is called a sawtooth and looks like,
well, the teeth of a saw - a smooth gradual ramp in voltage, followed by a
sudden return to the start of the ramp again. The electron beam moves
from left to right across the screen, and then rapidly back, following the
wave shape of the scanning voltage.
The vertical scanning in the television system is done similarly, as the
beam moves 60 times a second from the top of the screen to the bottom.
We have to control these sawtooth waveforms in some way.

Sawtooth wave

Basic television scanning process

(click on the picture for a bigger
view)

Sync Signals
We have already created a constantly changing voltage called the "video" signal. In its
primitive form, it is just the changes in an electrical signal that represent the light and dark
areas of a scene. These signals go from an arbitrary "zero percent" or "no light level" to "100
percent" or "maximum light level"; our scale is actually from 7.5 to 100. As this signal is
applied to a CRT electron beam, it reproduces with light the various areas of the picture.

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Horizontal Interval
But when we want to retrace the scan line
back to the left again, we don't want to see
it - we want it "blanked" out. So, during the
"right to left" retrace period, we insert into
our video signal a "horizontal blanking
pulse" (at "zero units," so we won't see the
retrace).

How we tell monitors how to scan from one line to the next

This is fine, but to ensure that our sawtooth

doesn't drift off frequency over a long time
(which would "skew" our picture in
unpredictable ways), we send, within the
horizontal blanking period a "horizontal
sync pulse." This can be used to feed the
sawtooth generator circuit, to give it a jolt, to
re-synchronize it at the end of every line. We'll
place this sync pulse at an intensity where
it can easily be detected by the sawtooth
circuit, and will never be seen by the viewer
- at "-40" on our relative scale. The pulses
will be sent 15,734 times a second (one for
each line of video).

Vertical Interval
A similar process occurs with the vertical
sweep. A vertical sync pulse is created. This
pulse triggers the second sawtooth wave
generator - the one that controls the "top to
bottom, and back to the top" part of scanning. It
tells this generator "better make your way back
to the top of the screen now." The shape of the
vertical sync pulse is actually six small pulses.
It's made up this way to provide
synchronization for the horizontal sawtooth
generator during the vertical retrace period.
In addition to the vertical sync pulses, another
group of pulses is required when using
interlaced scanning. Interlacing occurs
because the second field of scanning starts
half a line's distance across the screen, relative
to the first field. This means that the vertical
sawtooth voltage (inside the monitor) for
one field must occur one half line later than
for the other one.
Now, since our vertical sweeps are locked into
the vertical sync pulses, they must occur one
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half line after the last horizontal sync pulse in
one field, and one full line after the last
horizontal sync pulse in the other field. One
group of six "equalizing" pulses precedes the
vertical sync pulse to allow this to happen
properly; another group follows it. So, the
equalizing pulses make interlacing happen
and start the scans at the proper points in
each of the two video fields.

The vertical interval, featuring blanking, vertical sync pulse, and equalizing
pulses (click on the picture for a bigger view)

No horizontal hold, due to missing horizontal sync pulses

Vertical roll due to lack of luck with vertical sync pulse

There's one more thing you

should realize: there are two
vertical intervals, one after the
first field, and another after the
second field. They differ
slightly. Note that in Fig. A, the
first field finishes after a half line
of video; the first equalizing pulse
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is now displaced only a half line
away from the last horizontal sync
pulse in the previous field.
Likewise, the first line of video is
only a half line. The second field
(Fig. B) is completed with a full
line of video, and its
corresponding vertical interval
begins with a full line of video
(which is the start of field one,
again.) Otherwise, the vertical
blanking intervals for the even and
odd line fields are identical.

The vertical intervals at the end of each field differ a bit...

An interesting point for pay-TV subscribers: often,

scrambled video is just video without the sync - what you
may be paying for is the horizontal sync signal!
Scrambled pay-TV

How the parts of the composite video signal affect the monitor (click on the picture for a bigger view)

Try This At Home!

Okay, you can try this stuff on any TV set...
1. If your set has a "vertical hold" knob, rotate it - go ahead, it won't bite. You'll see the vertical
interval (that's what that "black bar" is when your set goes wonky.) Look at it real close. Try
and find the parts you just read about. Get acquainted with it; make it your friend.
2. Turn on some scrambled pay-TV. Watch the horizontal and vertical intervals jump all
around.

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3. Put the set back the way you found it when you're done, or your room mates will be really
annoyed with you.

Colour Television
Colour television employs the
basic principles of black-andwhite television. The essential
difference is that a colour picture
is like three pictures in one.
The screen of a colour monitor, in
effect, displays three images
superimposed on each other.
These images present,
respectively, the red, green, and
blue components of the colours in
the scene. Colour television
achieves reproduction of the
wide range of natural colours
by adjusting the relative
brightness of these red, green,
and blue images.

The additive colour wheel

If two images are suppressed (for

example, red and green), only the
remaining colour (blue) is seen. If
one image is suppressed (for
example, blue), the other two
(green and red) can cover the
range of colours from green to
red, including the intermediate
colours orange and yellow, by
changing the proportions of the
red and green channels. When all
three colours are present in the
proper proportions, white light is
produced - in fact, the whole
range of grays from black to
white can be reconstructed. By
allowing one or two of the three
colours to predominate, the white
light can be given the tint of the
stronger colours - pastel shades
can be reproduced.
This colour representation
process is called the additive
colour system.

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Colour Picture Tubes

At the rear of the picture tube is the electron
gun, which produces three separate beams
of electrons. These three beams hit the
coloured dots, and the tube is designed so
each beam can hit dots of only one colour; a
mask prevents each beam from striking the
others' colour dots. Because the coloured
dots are so small that they cannot be seen
separately by the viewer, the effect is three
superimposed images in the primary
colours. By adjusting the strength of the
respective beams of electrons, the relative
brightness of the image produced by each
can be changed.
Colour picture tube cutaway, showing electron gun, shadow mask and
arrangement of phosphor dots(courtesy Broadcast Engineering)

Try This At Home!

If you look at the screen of your colour TV set with a magnifying glass (turn it on, first), you can
easily see the red, green, and blue phosphors at work. If you don't have a magnifying glass, try
spraying the front of the screen with window cleaner (heck, your TV set screen probably
needed cleaning anyway...)

Try This In A Bar!

Go into a bar some quiet night, and, if you can, walk through the three beams that make up the
picture on the bar's projection TV (or, just put your hand in front of the lenses on the projector.)
Notice how the red, green, and blue projections converge together to make the picture on the
screen. Notice, also, how you now have to dodge the beer bottles being pitched by those
patrons who are trying to watch the hockey game!

Colour Cameras
The three electrical signals that
control the respective beams in
the picture tube are, these
days, produced in the colour
television camera by three CCD
(Charge Coupled Device)
integrated circuit chips.
The camera has a single lens,
behind which a set of prisms or
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"Front end" of a modern CCD camera

special dichroic mirrors produce

three images of the scene.
These are focused on the three
CCDs. In front of each one is a
colour filter; the filters pass
respectively only the red, green,
or blue components of the light
in the scene to the chips. The
three signals produced by the
camera are transmitted to the
respective electron guns in the
picture tube, where they recreate the scene.

Separation of full colour picture into red, green, and blue images

Three Channels of Colour - One Wire?

One way of connecting the camera to the picture tube is to use three separate cables, one for
each of the primary colour signals. In fact, a computer monitor takes the separate channels of
red, green and blue sent by the computer's video card and displays them directly on the
screen. To broadcast colour programs by this method, however, would require each station to
use three channels. The number of channels available for television is so limited that this
method is impractical. Also, if a black-and-white TV receiver were to tune in on such a colour
broadcast, it could receive only one of the three channels, and the grey-scale values
reproduced would be unnatural. There has to be a better way.

Making Luminance
Let's start by creating the luminance information from these colour channels. It's
produced by adding, electronically, the three signals from the colour camera, in the
ratios 30% red, 59% green, and 11% blue. The luminance signal is what a black-and-white
broadcast is like, so the black and white receiver, which interprets only this signal, gives a
correct rendition of the broadcast.
We already know how to send a composite signal (incorporating black and white information
and synchronization signals) down one wire. How can we add colour and still keep the whole
process compatible with our black and white system?
Right now, with the invention of black and white television, we have a signal which has
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a full range of frequencies between about 30 Hz and 4,200,000 Hz (4.2 MHz) - that's how
we transmit details in the television picture. Supposing we were to "borrow" a continuous
sine wave, of a very particular high frequency within that range, and somehow use it to
transmit colour information? How would we use it?

A Special Carrier Wave

One thing we can't do with this wave is change its frequency - that aspect of a wave is how we
tell the television system about the details in a scene. However, there are two other things
we can do with this high frequency sine wave - change its amplitude (level) and change
its phase. If, somehow, we could give this signal attributes that corresponded to how
saturated a colour was, and what particular hue it was, we could superimpose this signal
on the luminance, and send them both down the same wire. And that's what we do - with a
device called a colour encoder.
We have, in fact, chosen a particular frequency to represent colour information, and it is
exactly 3.579545 MHz, but you can remember it as 3.58 MHz. This is high enough a frequency
so it won't be seen on black and white television sets (except as occasional small "dots"), but
will still be within the bandwidth of what we're allowed to transmit over the airwaves.
Through a process involving manipulation of this high frequency (using the variations present
within the colour and luminance signals), we are able to produce what we call "colour
subcarrier" that has within it all of the possible hues ("which colours") we would ever want to
reproduce, and also information about how saturated ("colourful") our colours are.

A Burst of Colour Information

There is also a separate reference "colour burst" that is added at the beginning of each video
line, just after the horizontal sync signal. This is a short blip of colour subcarrier, and is used as
a reference to give the colour monitor a "starting point" as to which colour is supposed to be
represented, and how saturated that colour is. As various hues are displayed based on what
phase of subcarrier is being transmitted, the NTSC designers have decided that colour burst
will be sent at 180 phase.

Mix Ingredients Thoroughly...

This colour signal (the colour subcarrier, continuously changing its amplitude and phase, and
the colour burst itself) is mixed with our already available black and white signal, so that the
entire composite can be sent down a single wire.

The Colour Encoding Process - In Detail

Want to know how the colour encoding process really works? In all the nitty-gritty detail? For a
description of the colour encoding process in all its glory, please refer to the Appendix.
Here's a thought - if you aren't sure about this colour encoding stuff, sit with a friend and work
through the section in the Appendix. It does no harm to have a look, and something may come
clear to you that you hadn't understood before.
One last hitch about this colour encoding stuff and then we're done - honest.

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Video Is Not 30 Frames Per Second???

Up until now, we've been saying how television scans 525 lines in 1/30 of a second. Well,
that's not exactly true. You see, it was true in the days of black and white television. But, to
keep the visibility of the colour subcarrier in the monitor to a minimum (the "little dots" we
referred to earlier), a couple of the specifications got changed.
In black and white television, 525 lines scanned in 1/30 of a second gave us a line scan rate of
15,750 Hz (525 x 30). With the invention of colour television, that was changed to be precisely
related to the subcarrier frequency - 2/455 of it, in fact - which made it 15,734 Hz (2/455 x
3,579,545 Hz).
Having changed the line scan rate, the frame rate also had to change, from 30 frames a
second, to 29.97 frames a second (15,734 / 525). You might think that this doesn't matter too
much - after all, 29.97...30...whateverrr...close enough, right? But when you start editing
videotape, on the frame, these little discrepancies have a tendency of adding up, making your
show too short or too long. This problem comes back to haunt us when we start thinking about
time code (a frame numbering system used in editing.) See the chapter on Editing for more
details on this conundrum.

Transmitting The Image & NTSC Resolution - A Little

History, and A Look To The Future
Back in 1936, most of the new science and technology involved in television had been worked
out by two committees of the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA), and in the year before,
RCA had demonstrated a fully electronic 343-line television system.
In 1936 (before there was an NTSC), the committees decided: the television transmission
channel should be 6 MHz wide. This was a huge chunk of radio frequency spectrum to be
assigned for each channel - it was 600 times as wide a band as an AM broadcast station used,
but it still allowed lots of channels, with reasonable resolution in each.
Most of the channel is used to transmit the primary video signal, which occupies a sideband of
4.2 MHz (as decided by the RMA Television Standards Committee in 1938) - the other portions
of the channel are required for a vestigial sideband of the video signal and for sound
transmission. It's the standard by which we live today, and as such, puts very real limits
onto the maximum resolution of NTSC television.
So, what are the limits of NTSC resolution? This is a question hotly debated by everybody from
broadcast engineers to audio/video salesmen, so we'll tread safely on some known planks of
information.

Vertical
Resolution
Let's start with
the easy one:
vertical
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resolution. We
speak of NTSC
video as having
525 scanning
lines. This
number includes
42 of them (21
per field) that are
blanked out and
used up during
periods of
vertical retrace
(the electron
beam has to get
from the bottom
to the top of the
frame, and this
takes a certain
amount of time).
Therefore, we
really have 483
lines available
to us for picture
material. Now,
consider a test
chart with a
series of fine
black and white
lines, running
horizontally.
Place this in
front of a
camera. How
many lines can
you see on the
screen before
they begin to
blend?
If we're really,
really careful, we
might just be
able to scan
exactly 483
black and white
lines - one chart
line being
scanned exactly
by one line of
video. The odds

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of this happening
are pretty
dismal. In fact, if
by some chance,
we vertically reposition the chart
within the
camera's
framing just a
little bit, so our
video scanning
lines each
straddle a black
and a white line,
the result will be
a totally grey
screen with no
lines visible! As
we play around
with this game
of chance, it
turns out that
we can
successfully
reproduce 340
lines as often
as we like.
That's our
practical vertical
resolution. This
fooling around
with horizontal
stripes and a TV
camera that we
have just done
can be
mathematically
estimated, and it
has a name. The
Kell factor, as it's
called, is equal
to .7, so, if we
use it, we get
483 x .7 = 340
lines.

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Using a test card with a series of horizontal lines, to check vertical resolution of NTSC TV

Horizontal Resolution
Now comes the trickier one: horizontal
resolution. The arithmetic on this is a little
deeper, so bear with me as we go through it.
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We think of our NTSC scheme as a 525-line,
29.97 frame per second, television system,
that takes 1/15,734 of a second for each line
to scan across the screen.
Some of that scan line time is used to get the
electron beam back from the right side of the
screen over to the left again. This is called
horizontal retrace, and it leaves us with a
practical visible scan line that takes about
1/18975 of a second to track across the
screen from left to right. (1)
If we take our 4.2 MHz (4,200,000 cycles per
second) of bandwidth that we're allowed at
transmission, and divide it by the 1/18975 of
a second that we have to display our video in
(4,200,000 / 18975), we get about 220
cycles of signal per line.
Yuck. Television pictures would look pretty
chunky if you only were allowed a little more
than 200 picture elements per line. But these
are cycles, not pixels. Consider that a "cycle"
is a positive going voltage followed by a
negative going voltage - like in audio - and
we represent video by a series of everchanging voltages corresponding to the light
level read by the camera.

Using a test card with a series of vertical stripes to test the horizontal
resolution of NTSC TV

If we were to take our "bunch of black and

white lines" chart and tip it so the lines were
vertical, how many lines (black lines and
white lines) would we see before we blurred?
Each black line would be a low voltage,
followed by each white line - a high voltage.
That would be one "cycle." So with 220
cycles available to us, we could see 440
lines of video across the screen. That's
more like it.
To re-cap then, the practical resolution of
our broadcast transmission environment
is 340 lines top to bottom, and 440 lines
left to right. (2)

TV Lines Per Picture Height (TVL/PH)

We're now going to express these two resolutions a little differently, since with DTV and HDTV,

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we'll be dealing with screen sizes that aren't always 4:3. Today, we refer to resolutions
expressed in "TV lines per picture height" (TVL/PH). What this means is that we take a
"square" piece of the television picture (an area with equal height and width) and see how
much resolution we have in the horizontal and vertical directions within that shape. This makes
a certain amount of sense in that we are comparing the same distance in each direction on the
television screen and speaking of the relative resolution in each of those directions. This
makes it possible for us to compare NTSC resolution to DTV digital resolution to HDTV
resolution since we're looking at the same square for all these formats.
Let's try it with NTSC. Since our picture here is 4:3, we'll take a piece of the picture that's
essentially 3:3. This makes the vertical resolution number easy to figure out: it's the same as
the full height of the 4:3 screen, or 340 TVL/PH. For horizontal resolution, let's make our way
across the screen, left to right, for the same distance, or about 3/4 of the way across the NTSC
screen. That will give us 440x.75=330 TVL/PH. You'll notice how the horizontal and vertical
resolutions (330 vs. 340 TVL/PH) are almost identical, resulting in what could be thought of as
"square pixels" on the screen, with equal resolutions in both directions.
The next time you walk into a mega-hi-fi/video store and the salesperson tries to sell you an
expensive TV set with "over 600 lines of resolution", just remember to ask them why this is
necessary, since no broadcaster sends out that much resolution in the first place...I wonder
what their answer would be? Oh, and while you're at it, impress 'em with your new knowledge
of "lines per picture height".

Things To Think About:

The purpose of our television system is to allow us to send
television down a single transmission channel.
Some parts of the process to do this include scanning, interlace,
synchronization signals, and, in the case of colour television,
colour encoding of separate colour channels of picture information.
This system has inherent within it certain limits of resolution. What
are those limits?
1. This figure may vary from 1/18832 to 1/19048, depending who you talk to and whether they're considering
doing this calculation based on minimum or maximum time for horizontal blanking (retrace).
2. Some engineers do the calculations a little differently than I've done them here - your mileage may vary.

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