Sound Person's Guide to Video

299 Pages·2000·3.41 MB·English

by  David Mellor

A Sound Person’s Guide to Video
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
A Sound Person’s Guide to Video
David Mellor
Focal Press
OXFORD AUCKLAND BOSTON JOHANNESBURG MELBOURNE NEW DELHI
Focal Press
An imprint of Butterworth-Heinemann
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
225 Wildwood Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801-2041
A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd
A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group
First published 2000
© Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by
electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some
other use of this publication) without the written permission of the
copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London,
England W1P 0LP. Applications for the copyright holder’s written
permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed
to the publishers
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0 240 51595 1
Composition by Genesis Typesetting, Rochester, Kent
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Foreword ix
1 The origins of television and video 1
In the beginning, Scanning, The coming of colour, A new standard,
Video
2 The magic of television 10
Colour television
3 Video recording – the impossible dream 18
Early developments, Helical scan, U-Matic, Domestic video formats
4 The electronic eye 27
Part 1 Camera basics: Tube cameras, Charge-coupled devices, The colour
camera.
Part 2 The modern camera: Hyper HAD, Into digits, Master Set-up
Unit
5 ENG and Betacam SP 44
Betacam, Compressed time division multiplexed system, Audio in
Betacam, The future
6 Digital video 51
D1, D1 error protection, D2, D3 and D5, Why so many formats? DV and
DVCPRO: Small is beautiful, Nuts and bolts, DVCPRO, Digital cinemat-
ography, Step up from SP, Compression, Yet another format?, The kit, The
accessories
7 Standards conversion 73
Three problems, Sampling, Composite video, Interpolation, Motion
compensation, Comparing standards converters
vi Contents
8 The video monitor 81
Sync and scan, Antenna to CRT, Display technology, The shadow mask,
Progressive scan, Flat panel displays, LCD, Plasma displays, Future
technologies
9 Home cinema 96
The vision, Audio, Virtual Surround
10 Nonlinear editing 105
Offline/online, Timeline, Integration
11 JPEG and MPEG2 image compression 113
JPEG, Discrete cosine function, Entropy coding, Results, JPEG for moving
pictures, MPEG2, Syntax and semantics, Spatial and temporal compres-
sion, Motion estimation prediction, Profiles and levels, Applications
12 Digital television 132
Digital television in the UK: Digital video, Broadcasting, Possibilities, On
demand, The consumer angle, Widescreen, Conclusion. Digital television
in the USA: Technical issues
13 Film 146
A brief history of film, Meanwhile in France . . ., The coming of sound,
Widescreen, Sideways look, Colour, 3D, Why film will prosper
14 Film stock, film laboratories 163
Formats, Types, Intermediate and print film, Laboratories, Rushes,
Printing, Editing and regrading, Release print
15 Cinema technology 183
Lamphouse, Reels and platters, Lenses, Sound head, Cinema systems
16 IMAX 192
The camera, Projection, The IMAX cinema, Post-production
17 Telecine 201
Film feats, Technology, Cathode ray tube, Scanning, Digital processing,
High resolution
18 Pulldown 209
29.97, PAL pulldown, So what should you do? A new frame rate?
19 Lighting technology 218
Film and video lighting, Lamps glow, bulbs grow, HMI, Broads, Blondes
and Redheads, Moving light, changing colour – performance lighting, To
boldly gobo
Contents vii
20 The art of bluescreen 234
Rotoscoping, Ultimatte, Motion control
Appendix 1 The science of colour 243
Light, The eye, Subtractive colour mixing, Additive colour mixing,
Colour triangle, Colour temperature
Appendix 2 Timecode: the link between sight and sound 251
The nature of timecode, Types of timecode, Timecode generation. Sound
and picture, working together: Finger sync, Code-only master, ‘Real’
instruments, CTL and direction. Synchronizer systems: System extras,
Jam on it, Synchronizers, Synchronization terminology
Appendix 3 Audio in video editing 273
The editing process, The end of offline?
Index 281
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Foreword
As an audio specialist, you obviously get immense enjoyment and
satisfaction from interplay between the technology and artistry involved
in the creation of sound images, to inform and entertain your audience.
You wouldn’t want to work anywhere else, because if you did then you
would never have had the required determination to make it into the
sound industry in the first place. But sound no longer exists in isolation
from other media and art forms. In particular, sound is now so closely
bonded to the visual image that we must at all times consider the effect
the actions we take will have on the finished production as a whole, in the
mind of the moviegoer or TV viewer. A Sound Person’s Guide to Video
covers the technology not just of video but also film, multimedia and live
performance as well – in fact anywhere that visual images and sound go
together. Some of the chapters in this book will be cutting edge
technology, others will look at the history and background to modern
techniques. Occasionally these pages will cover aspects of the film, video
and related industries themselves to see how the pieces fit together. It’s a
whole new world out there, so let’s take a peek . . .