Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Awards Fujitsu with 2010 SMPTE Journal Certificate of Merit for Technical Paper on Innovative Color-Sampling for High-definition Satellite Newsgathering (HD-SNG) Broadcast Applications

- New chroma-sampling filter set completely suppresses color degradation blur for MPEG-4 AVC chroma-sampling formats 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 -

Akira Nakagawa, Research Fellow at Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, received his award from The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) at an awards ceremony held in Hollywood at the Society's Annual Tech Conference and Expo 2010

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the leading technical society for the motion imaging industry and an accredited and globally-respected industry standards-setting body, has awarded Fujitsu Laboratories senior researcher Akira Nakagawa with the 2010 SMPTE Journal Certificate of Merit for his paper "The 4:2:2/4:2:0 Perfect Reconstruction Filter Set and Its Application in HD-SNG" published in the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal (Vol. 118, No. 5, July/August 2009). An awards ceremony was held at the SMPTE's Annual Tech Conference and Expo 2010, held in October 2010 in Hollywood, California, U.S.

Nakagawa presented a novel innovative chroma (color)-sampling filter set, known as the "Perfect Reconstruction Filter Set" (for chroma down-sampling and up-sampling), designed for the 4:2:0 video codec used widely in high-definition satellite newsgathering (HD-SNG), that resolves and completely suppresses blur (chroma displacement), a technical drawback which occurs when several 4:2:0 codecs are concatenated (linked) by high-definition serial digital interface (HD-SDI, a 4:2:2 interconnect).The proposed new chroma-sampling filter set enables sharp color edges in video even after numerous stages of concatenation, by completing suppressing blur in video color degradation.

Background

Today's broadcast environment requires the ability to transmit high-quality video at low bit rates, in order to optimize the bandwidth of HD-SNG and minimize operating costs - to this end, the adoption of MPEG-4 AVC is globally advancing. For broadcast applications, two types of MPEG-4 AVC chroma-sampling formats are used: 4:2:0 and 4:2:2, with tradeoffs existing between the two formats - 4:2:0 yields a high picture quality at lower bit rates, and is widely used for SNG feeds because of limited and costly satellite bandwidth, while at higher bit rates 4:2:2 offers better picture quality and is popular for sports contribution feeds, archiving applications, and network distribution in which higher channel bandwidths are available. However, 4.2.0 chroma sampling has a major drawback - when two or more 4.2.0 codecs are concatenated, the chroma component gradually becomes blurred because the codecs are usually connected via high-definition serial digital interface (HD-SDI, a 4:2:2 interconnect).

Results

Fujitsu's proposed new chroma sampling filter - designed for the 4:2:0 video codec - can completely suppress chroma degradation blur even after several stages of concatenation. Testing of the 4:2:2/4:2:0 filter set on hardware proved that chroma does not blur even at up to 16 stages of 4:2:0 codec concatenation, thereby making it ideal for HD-SNG broadcast applications which require high picture quality at low bit rates.

For more information:

"The Cure for Concatenation, Preserving 4:2:0 chroma integrity in concatenated operations":
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/documents/about/resources/awards/ip-9500-concatenation_wp.pdf (1.26 MB )

Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineering (SMPTE):
http://smpte2010.org/honors-awards-ceremony

left : Fujitsu Laboratories' Akira Nakagawa's acceptance speech, for his award from SMPTEright : SMPTE 2010 Awards Ceremony (Hollywood, California, U.S.)

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) 2010 award recipients