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Author Topic: Digital Comments in MPAA! You Suck Evans A Criswell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1579 From: Huntsville, AL, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 09-25-2003 04:33 PM                        Traditional video is just a 1D continuous analog signal with vertical and horizontal sync pulses put in at the right times. As a result, you get an odd animal -- a virtual 2D signal that is discrete in one direction and continuous in the other. Digital systems are discrete in both directions. Traditional video was originally captured by a pickup tube. The scanning spot used determined the maximum resolution that could be captured. If you take the function for the scene being captured and convolve it with the aperture, you get the signal captued (which will also have some noise added to it). Displaying traditional video was just the opposite -- taking this 1D signal and using an electron beam to light phosphor on a CRT. Things are much more complicated now because you have 1. The sensor or device used for physically capturing the scene 2. Optional electronic processing on the input signal (or data) 3. Transmission or storage of the signal captured 4. Receiving or decoding of the signal being played 5. Optional electronic processing of the signal being played 6. Physical display of the signal being played. Any of these can be analog or digital, and can be at different resolutions, use totally different types of technology, etc. Some of the steps above can involve their own hidden layer of digital processing and manipulation. You can have a movie shot on film, scanned digitally and converted using the 2:3 technique to 480i, recorded in analog form onto analog videotape in 480i and distributed to a TV station. At the TV station, they may play the analog videotape, run the analog signal through a system that digitizes the analog signal and upscales it digitally to 720p for broadcast. The broadcast signal is analog. A person may receive this 720p broadcast on their HDTV which does not display 720p natively and converts it to 1080i using a digital process, then displays this 1080i signal on the CRTs. This particular scenario may not be likely, but it illustrates the point that it's gone from film to digital to analog, back to digital, then broadcast in analog, received in analog, conveted to digital in the consumer's set, resampled and finally back to analog again to drive the CRTs in the consumer's RPTV. It was a movie shot on film, but it's video after the first scanning step. Just imagine something shot in HDTV (say 1080i) and converted to film and back to video again in the middle somewhere. As for modern digital movie cameras, I'd like to know more about how the CCd array is scanned or read -- if all sensors on the CCD react and are exposed at the same time and "hold their values" until read, or if their values change and are scanned by the processor in them, giving them the characteristic of progressive analog video?  |  IP: Logged Kevin Wale Expert Film Handler Posts: 167 From: Guymon, OK USA Registered: Aug 2003 posted 09-25-2003 06:26 PM                     No, a digital still camera is not video because the defintion of video is dependant on motion picture. How the image is captured has nothing to do with whether or not it is video. It is how it is displayed. The key to the definition of video is "electronic signals through a wire." The entry being written before such advancements is irrelevant. It's the method of presentation that makes it video. Digital is therefore digital video rather than analog video.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-25-2003 10:49 PM                        Excellent point.  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-25-2003 11:54 PM                        Don't a number of digital still cameras have a jack marked "video out" with an S-VHS connector? Where are they getting hold of that? For example, the Kodak EasyShare CX4300. Another Fine Kodak Product  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 09-26-2003 12:02 AM                        They probably buy the jacks in bulk from somebody like Mouser.  |  IP: Logged

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