Broadcast Engineering Magazine
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FEATURELegalizing video can degrade the quality. Art concept created by Robin THEMetheny. CHALLENGE Waveform OF LEGALIZING images providedFILE-BASED by VIDEO Tektronix. The challenge of legalizing file-based video BY THOMAS DOVE o most people, video legal- forming to BT-601, the value of the Y lie outside the valid/legal ranges, then ization means ensuring that component of the YUV signal should the values are clipped to ensure they the levels in a baseband dig- be within the range of 16 to 235. This are within the ranges required. ital video signal are legal — is because the values of 0 to 15 are Legalization alters the data values Tthat is, they are within the legal range. below black or within the range of — generally losing detail — and af- For SD video, the analog waveform is sync values. Likewise, there are upper fects the video signal in a way that the represented by 8-bit digital values in limits as well as limits on the U and content provider did not intend. This the range 0 to 255, either in RGB or V components, both in their own val- aside, there are many reasons why YUV/YPrPb color spaces. Depend- ues and in combination — the com- video legalization won’t work for file- ing on the color space, some of these bination values being relevant when based video. values and combinations of values are conversion to the RGB color space In effect, legalizing afterward is a outside the range of full black to full occurs (where specific YUV values bit like papering over cracks. white; they are sync signals or over- can generate values outside the legal white, or simply cannot be converted RGB color space). Video legalization Types of errors from one color space to another. or auto-correction is where these sig- File-based video is by definition As an example, for SD video con- nal levels are monitored, and if they digital files that store the video and This article originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of Broadcast Engineering magazine. Copyright 2007, Broadcast Engineering. Reprinted with permission. FEATURE THE CHALLENGE OF LEGALIZING FILE-BASED VIDEO tiple program transport stream. • Missing required data, for example, when closed captioning or teletext are not present. • Metadata errors, such as missing copyright information or other data used by an automation system. • Simple factors, such as incorrect play time. Other examples include when the audio has been put on channels 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2 (or omitted altogether) or the wrong version of the content has been provided. • Incorrect bit-rate for the video or audio. • Incorrect stream set-up, such as when three seconds of audio silence is re- quired at the start but is not present. Figure 1. Video abstraction levels • Compliance to various industry de- audio. In the majority of cases, the video is relatively new compared with facto standards, such as CableLabs 1.1 video is compressed in some way the well-understood old analog vid- compliance. (usually the audio is compressed as eo signal levels, the vast majority of • Encoding quality errors where the well), and there is transport stream problems are completely unrelated to encoder produces a series of blocky data (or a transport layer/mecha- video legalization. Therefore, it is vi- video frames, for example, when there nism) and metadata. There is a large tal that any test/checking system can is lots of movement. increase in abstraction from the base- detect these. • MPEG encoding syntax errors, which band signals, as the video/audio data Problems that occur in file-based can occur due to multiple mux/de- is compressed and metadata is added video include: mux operations, or an encoder blip. — and video legalization occurs only • Transport stream errors, such as in- • Errors in the syntax of the video and at the lowest level. (See Figure 1.) correct PIDs, PATs, PMTs and PCRs. audio elementary streams. Therefore, there are many prob- • Multiplexing errors, for example, • The stream is correct and legal, but lems that video/audio legalization where the video and audio have been still not what the broadcaster needs. does not address. In fact, as file-based truncated when extracted from a mul- For example, it should be NTSC but is Curious? Please visit our website: www.riedel.net How to set-up a digital partyline intercom system: Step 1: Take the Performer CR-4 Masterstation. Enjoy the outstanding Digital Audio Quality of Step 2: Interconnect Beltpacks, Desktop Panels Riedel’s Performer Digital Partyline Series: or Wallboxes according to your needs. It’s just plug-and-play. Step 3: You’re done! Riedel Communications Inc. • 200 Clearbrook Road • Elmsford, NY 10523 • USA • Phone +1 914 592 0220 • www.riedel.net This article originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of Broadcast Engineering magazine. Copyright 2007, Broadcast Engineering. Reprinted with permission. FEATURE THE CHALLENGE OF LEGALIZING FILE-BASED VIDEO PAL, or it should be 4.5Mb/s peak but splitting up can generate errors. Base- be recompressed to the same video goes to a peak of 4.6Mb/s. Typically, a band test systems cannot detect these standard (MPEG-2, MPEG-4/AVC, broadcaster will have many such con- types of errors, and video legalizers VC-1, etc.) and remultiplexed with the straints/requirements. cannot to fix them. audio and metadata. (See Figure 2.) • Errors due to the way the data is split In order to do the testing of the However, all the encoding schemes out and put onto a video server. Some baseband as required for video legal- use lossy compression, meaning that servers separate video, audio and ization, the compressed video file must some of the quality is always lost. The metadata, and if there are some errors be fully decoded to baseband. If there original compressed file had some in these elementary streams or other is then a gamut/legality problem and loss due to the first encoding, but the parts of the data, then this process of the video is then legalized, it must also content provider would (likely) have done a careful and painstaking qual- ity control to ensure that the picture quality was as required. An automatic re-encoding as done by a legalizer would add enormously to the compression artifacts. It may well be that artifacts not visible on first encoding become visible on re- encoding after legalization. In addi- tion, there would not be the careful quality control afterward, so the re- sults of the legalization may be video with unacceptable artifacts. Previous research has indicated a 5dB loss in visual quality from doing a second-generation re-encode. Testing In order to do the testing of the baseband as required for video le- galization, the compressed video file must be fully decoded to baseband. If there is then a gamut/legality prob- Figure 2. The steps involved with video legalization lem and the video is then legalized, The question isn’t why we’re offering no-fee support. The question is, why isn’t everybody else? When our customers talk, we listen. So when they said, “We love your automation software, but we don’t want to pay extra for support,” we said, “Okay.” They said, “Really? Why doesn’t everyone treat us this well?” “That,” we said, “is a good question.” Announcing Crispin 4 Life. No-fee 24/7 support for your automation software. Automation just got easier. Let’s talk about you: [email protected] 919.845.7744 www.crispincorp.com This article originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of Broadcast Engineering magazine. Copyright 2007, Broadcast Engineering. Reprinted with permission. FEATURE FEATURE THE CHALLENGE OF LEGALIZING FILE-BASEDTHE VIDEO CHALLENGE OF LEGALIZING FILE-BASED VIDEO the following may be needed: to these values, but it’s not relevant to • The fi le must be recompressed to this point.) The legalizer controls can the same video standard — MPEG-2, be driven to ensure that the video sig- MPEG-4/AVC, VC-1, etc. nal coming off tape and being color- • It must keep the same parameters, corrected lies between 16 and 235 and which are sometimes set manually over is not crushing. Of course, there’s al- a range of frames to get the optimum ways a margin of error in any kind of appearance. process that is controlled by a human • The compressed video will need to operator, but it wouldn’t be expected be remultiplexed with the audio and that this crushing would exceed 1 per- metadata. cent, which is negligible. • The metadata might need to be up- So, if there was a sequence of vid- dated as well. eo bytes, say a luminance ramp from This is not easy to do, and there is a black to white, which was coming in as great chance that this process will in- 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 ... 233, 234, troduce errors. As a result, rather than 235, and the lift control was turned fi xing a minor video legality prob- down so these values became 13, 14, lem, more serious errors have been 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 ... 230, 231, 232, introduced. then at the output of the legalizer, the In addition, typically a content signal would be 16, 16, 16, 16, 17, 18, provider or broadcaster would have 19, 20 ... 230, 231, 232. carefully assessed and chosen spe- Thus, some original detail has been cifi c encoders to be optimal for their clipped off or crushed out and could requirements. With automatic legal- never subsequently be recovered. If ization, this will likely use whatever the lift control is later turned back up encoder the legalizer has — whether on this modifi ed signal, the sequence it is good, bad or indifferent.